


The Great Divide Chapter 31: Save Yourself

by Antigravity_Carnivore



Series: The Great Divide [31]
Category: Breaking Benjamin (Band), Project Vela (Band), STARSET (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Band Fic, Canon Gay Character, Character Death, Computers, Death, F.E.C., F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Future, Future Fic, Gay, Gay Male Character, Government Conspiracy, Heavy Angst, Inspired by Music, Love, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Music, Musicians, Rebellion, Science Fiction, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 19:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15153572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antigravity_Carnivore/pseuds/Antigravity_Carnivore
Summary: Standing at the gates of Dawn, Dustin Bates must confront his worst fears and find a way inside the base, while unbeknownst to him, terrible things are going on inside. Will he and Keith be able to set aside their differences and find a way inside before it's too late?





	The Great Divide Chapter 31: Save Yourself

Standing at the end of the hallway, Benjamin listened to the sound of the woman’s voice echoing all around him. It was a sound that he had heard countless times before, but never thought he’d ever hear again. He stood there motionless, letting the memories and emotions come flooding back into his brain. The fingers on the hand at his side curled into a tight fist. Moving behind him, he could hear the quiet dragging sound of material shuffling along the concrete floor as she drew near. The smell of disinfectant and chemicals was thick in the air. Slipping her arms around his waist, Rhiannon stepped forward and leaned against his back, closing her eyes and letting her head rest between his shoulder blades. "I’ve missed you so much Benjamin.”

Turning his head slightly, Benjamin glanced over his shoulder. “It’s been a long time.” 

“Too long.” Taking a deep breath, Rhiannon took in the thick scent of rose petals that hung on him. “Yes, we lost so many years, but I always knew that you’d come for me. You’ve been a hero for so many others, and now you get to be MY hero. Somehow, I knew that you would find a way to save me, and bring me back to life. We’re meant to be together. That’s why I kept whispering to you in your dreams, my love. I didn’t want you to forget about me.” Opening her eyes, Rhiannon looked up to her husband, trying to read the expression on his face, but all she could make out was the light glint of odd color in his eyes. “You must have triggered something when you ripped that visor off me and disconnected the machines that were keeping me unconscious all these years. I thought I was dead, but my heart started beating again. It’s all because of you. Maybe it was the jolt that my body needed to come back to life, but it really doesn’t matter….I am here now, a living, breathing woman, as I should be.” Shifting her fingers slightly, she moved them up the sides of Benjamin’s body to the front of his torso, over his shirt and across his chest, feeling each of his massive, tight muscles in turn from behind. “It’s alright though; we can put everything behind us and start over again. All of us.”

Feeling her warm body pressed against him, Benjamin placed his hands over hers, stopping her from moving and giving it them light squeeze. “I know that you have my son.” he said coldly. The tone in his voice was firm and demanding, laced with accusation. “Where is Burnley?”

Lifting her head, and slightly concerned about the vibe he was putting off, Rhiannon tried to move away from Benjamin, but he kept a tight grip on her hands which were still wrapped around him, preventing her from moving. “OUR son, Benjamin… is here at Dawn. He is in the safest place in the world that he ever could be in right now. There’s no need to worry about him, my love. I assure you that no one will harm him. He is waiting here for us to come and set him free…together. I will show you where he is, but you need to trust me. I know it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, but I am your wife, I am the person that you loved and married so many years ago, the one you fell in love with. I need you to trust me. Please don’t treat me like a stranger.”

Benjamin let go of Rhiannon’s small hands and turned around to face her. The young, vibrant woman that he had pledged his life to so many years ago was now gone, replaced by a mere shadow of her former self. The once long blonde hair that cascaded down her shoulders in warm waves of color was now faded to a pale tone, reflecting shades of silver and gray. The skin on her body was porcelain white and stretched across her bones like wet paper. Removing the visor had obviously been a shock to her system, and even though she was still young, the near white hair and gaunt appearance made her seem older than she actually was. Wrapped around her was the white sheet that Ben had placed over her dead body earlier and she had been dragging along the floor of the corridor. Reaching up, Ben pushed a piece of hair away from her eyes. “You’ve changed.”

Rhiannon blushed, a trace of color fading onto her pale cheeks. She placed a hand on his jawline, and ran her fingers through his thick beard which was tinged with bits of gray. “So have you, but I know who you are, I’ve always known.” Her eyes met his and she took a step forward, dropping the sheet down to the ground and revealing her naked body. Stretching her arms up, she wrapped them around Benjamin’s neck and stood on her tip toes to reach him. “I also know what you’ve done Benjamin. I’ve seen it… felt it…every single life that you have taken since you became the Shepherd of the Damned.” Pressing her thin frame against his, she ran her fingers through his hair. Her breasts pushed against his chest, moving slightly with each breath that she drew in, as her hips centered over his, letting him feel the weight of her body pressing down on him. “I am not afraid of you. I can feel the power running through your veins even now, just begging to be released.” Her eyes met his, and she searched for some sign of emotion or feeling, but there was none. Nevertheless, she continued to try her best to reassure him, she had to make sure that he trusted her beyond a shadow of a doubt. “It’s alright my love. I am here for you now; you don’t have to bare this burden alone. Let me help you, let me share in that power. I can take that insatiable hunger away.” Bringing her face close to his, Rhiannon pressed a firm kiss to his lips, and dropped one of her hands down to the front of his pants. As her lips glided over his, Ben took her into his arms and slid his hands down to her hips, completely overwhelming her and taking control of the passionate kiss. Feeling his fingertips dig into her flesh, Rhiannon broke free of the kiss and let out a orgasmic moan of delight. She leaned her head back and Benjamin covered every inch of her neck in kisses. A light chuckle escaped her lips. “See Ben, this is what you need to cage the beast inside of you. I’ve been here all along, waiting for you, for this moment, I am the only one who can take care of you, and you know it. All you had to do was come to me… be with me… and I could take all the pain away from you…but you waited, so long.” Flexing her fingers, Rhiannon reached forward and shifted her hand further along the front of Ben’s pants, teasing him with slow movements as he kissed her over and over. “Now you can forget about all the others, everything that you need is right here, right now. We can be a family again, all three of us.” 

Suddenly the door behind them opened, and Shaun stepped out into the hall. “Hey Ben, I wanted to let you know that---“He stopped as Ben turned slightly to the side, and he caught a glimpse of Rhiannon, naked. Quickly he averted his eyes. He felt awkward and embarrassed at interrupting a private moment. For some odd reason, the sight of Rhiannon and Benjamin together made him feel more than a little uncomfortable, and he couldn’t quite figure out why. They had been together since high school; a married couple for over ten years, why was seeing them together now suddenly so strange? “Rhiannon! Oh ugh I am sorry I didn’t realize that you were awake. I ah.. yeah, you look much better than when I first got here. Good to see you back on your feet.” Shaun blurted out. 

Rhiannon laughed and rested her head against Benjamin’s chest. “It’s alright Shaun. I am not embarrassed, and neither should you be. After all, Ben is my husband; it’s perfectly natural for two people who are in love to be close to one another.” She blinked slowly as a smile came across her light pink lips. “We’re a loving family, and there’s always room for one more if you’d like to join us. I know that Ben wouldn’t mind.”

Looking down at his wife, Benjamin shook his head and gave her a light push away, turning toward Shaun, obviously not amused by her inappropriate joke. Rhiannon’s eyes flashed fiercely for a moment at Ben’s unexpected rejection, and then she bent down to pick up the sheet that she had dropped, hastily wrapping it around her body. “Shaun, where is the child?” He asked. 

“Huh? Oh yeah, the kid that you brought in, he’s downstairs in the cradle, waiting for you. He won’t go to sleep at all, but I got him to stop fussing. Leanne always said that I had a way with kids, I guess she is right.” Shaun shoved his hands into his pockets. “Hey Ben, I don’t know what’s going on here, and this all makes me feel a little uncomfortable. One minute Keith and I were hanging out and then all of a sudden we are here… and BAM you are alive, and Rhiannon’s here, and she’s not in a coma anymore…come to think of it, I don’t even know where ‘here’ is…and now there’s this 3 month old baby downstairs… Would you mind explaining some things?”

An eerie silence descended over the hallway, as Benjamin turned around to face Shaun. The dim light reflected and shimmered in his amber colored eyes, and there was a menacing, sinister presence to each of his steps as he moved forward. Coming to a stop in front of his friend, Ben reached out and placed a hand along the side of Shaun’s face. As each of his thin fingers wrapped around his firm jawline, Ben tilted his head up to face him and leaned down to whisper in his ear. “You’re better off not knowing. Just do as I say.” Feeling his body start to tremble and his knees give way, Shaun forced himself to take a step back. There was something utterly terrifying about Benjamin now, that made him want to turn around and run as far away as he can. He had no idea why Ben had kissed him earlier, and spent some time wondering about it while he was downstairs with the baby, but no matter how many times he turned it over in his head, he couldn’t seem to find a reason why he did it. Being alone around Ben made Shaun feel things that were completely new and confusing for him, and he wasn’t sure that he liked not being in control of these emotions. Sensing his discomfort, Ben smiled at him. He knew that he was in Shaun’s head now, and that gave him the upper hand. “I want you to take Rhiannon back to her room. Find some clothes for her and then meet me downstairs. Do not leave her side, do you understand me?” 

Shaun tore his eyes off Ben for a moment to look at Rhiannon, who was clutching the white sheet against her frail frame down the hall. It was obvious from her body language that she was not pleased. “Ben, um don’t you think that maybe you should go with her? I wouldn’t be much help anyway, I don’t know my way around here very well, and if something happens…” Benjamin reached out and grabbed hold of Shaun’s arm, squeezing it tightly. “Ouch, hey man what are you doing? That freaking hurts, let go of me! What’s gotten into you?”

“Do what I say.” Benjamin snarled, glaring at Shaun.

Coming up behind him, Rhiannon gently laid her hand on her husband’s arm. “It’s alright. I can go on my own. I don’t need an escort or anyone to protect me. I am feeling much better now, and there’s nothing here to be afraid of….everyone is…” She hesitated, and felt Benjamin staring at her. “Everyone here is gone.” Her eyes lingered on Ben, challenging him for long moments until he finally let go of Shaun. The tension in the air was thick and suffocating. “Shaun, you can go with Benjamin. It’s been quite some time since the two of you got to talk, so I bet you have a lot of catching up to do. I’ll leave you two boys alone and find something a bit more appropriate to wear and then catch up with you downstairs. I am sure that we can get this all sorted out in no time and be on our way home.” Flashing a smile, she turned on her heel and started back down the hallway to the residential area of the base. 

Standing toe to toe with Benjamin for a moment, Shaun felt a shiver of terror travel down his spine. The look in his eyes was something he had never seen before, something wholly terrifying that was not unlike looking into the stone cold gaze of a murderer. There was a lingering taint of evil that permeated the air around Benjamin, making Shaun feel incredibly uneasy, and he knew that he didn’t want to be alone with him now, but at the same time, he didn’t want to be with Rhiannon. She wasn’t completely sane herself, and her incessant teasing and off the cuff attitude was incredibly annoying, but at this point she was the lesser of two evils, and until he could figure out what was wrong with his best friend, he would have to deal with her. Being with Benjamin made him feel uncomfortable anyway. Slipping away from Benjamin, Shaun called out after Rhiannon. “Wait, I will go with you.” Hurrying after her, he had just reached her side when he heard a door behind them close. He turned around to see that Benjamin had already left the hall and was making his way downstairs to where the child was.

After a short walk, Shaun and Rhiannon made it back to the residential area, where they managed to gain access to a private room and started to rummage through someone’s personal items, looking for clothing for Rhiannon to wear. As they searched, Shaun became increasingly more agitated. “I just don’t get what’s going on here.” He said, pulling out some bed sheets and blankets from a closet. “Benjamin’s supposed to be dead, I was at the funeral, we all saw his body, and yet here he is walking around like nothing ever happened… and you…you’re supposed to be in a coma in some hospital.” He let out a long sigh and dropped the useless material to the floor and moved onto the next closet. “I feel like I am in some sort of alternate dimension or something.”

Across the room, Rhiannon located a Messenger uniform and examined it. “Not another dimension, but another planet, and another time.” He turned to look at her and then noticed that she had dropped the sheet and was standing there, completely naked. She noticed him staring and smiled. “Don’t go getting bashful now, we’re way past that.” Satisfied with her find, Rhiannon started to slip into the uniform, speaking quietly to him. “We were all fools, all of us. Benjamin’s friend Dustin had been trying to warn us about the FEC for so long, but we all ignored him. Everything he said in his lyrics, in his songs were a way of trying to convince us that we were fighting a losing battle. The FEC destroyed Earth, Shaun. There’s nothing to go back to. I found a way using the visor they put on me to pluck you and Keith both out of time and bring you here before all the devastation happened, in hopes that you could help me. The same thing happened to Benjamin and Dustin as well, but in a different way, and now we’re all here, together. Sadly though, the visor I was using has been destroyed, and the way home is closed. It brought you to me, and I was able to manipulate its use to my advantage, but at the same time it was keeping my body in that state of stasis. I had such wonderful power, and it kept growing by the minute. When Benjamin removed it, I died. The connections to my brain were severed, thus ending all the power that I once had…but it also sent one last pulse into my system that kick started my heart, bringing me back to life. My husband was both my killer and my savior. I forgive him though, he’s not exactly himself at the moment, and he needs help.”

Shaun watched Rhiannon as she finished dressing and slowly walked around the room, looking through the desk drawers and cabinets. “Why? Why did you bring us here? It couldn’t have been just to save us, because I know that you and Benjamin would have been happy together alone. There must be another reason, and I have a feeling that it has something to do with that kid that he brought here.”

Coming over to join him, Rhiannon leaned against the arm of a large sofa that sat in the center of the room and adjusted the sleeves of her shirt. “Benjamin has changed…turned into something terrible, a horrible evil version of himself. I tried to prevent it from happening, I sent people out to stop him, but it was too late. I know that you know exactly what I am talking about Shaun, you saw it in his eyes, and you can feel it whenever you are near him. I brought you here because I need your help, you and Keith must bring Benjamin back to me. I am sure that he can be saved, but I can’t do it on my own. I was thinking that if he had everyone here, all those who really cared for him, we might be able to find a way to bring the real Ben back and do away with this… this.. thing that he’s become. We have to save him.” Her eyes started to fill up with tears and she quickly wiped them away with her sleeve. “All I wanted to do was make him happy. He’s done so much for so many people and I wanted him to have a little of that happiness and joy for himself. I want him to have his family back, and his friends. After all that he’s done, for me, for you, don’t you think that he really deserves another chance?” Quickly approaching him, Rhiannon looked up at Shaun as she stood before him with watery eyes and took hold of one of his hands. “Remember how sick Benjamin was all the time? He never cut his shows short, no matter how ill he was feeling, he stepped out there on the stage with you and the other boys and put on a fantastic show, because he knew that people were depending on him. At the end of the night, he’d crawl into the trailer with us, feeling so miserable, sick and exhausted that he couldn’t even hold his son in his arms. And when we were home, Ben would be out there on the beach, walking along the shoreline, instead of being in the house here with us, because he knew that if he sat down and gave in, just for one moment that the sickness would creep back in and completely devastate his body again. That’s living but not really being alive.” Her fingers ran along Shaun’s knuckles as she spoke. “Here, on Prox, he can be whole again. He can have the life that he deserves, with you and Keith, and me and little Ben. Everything that he needs is right here, but slightly out of reach. We have to help him fight through this. Together.”

Shaun gently pushed Rhiannon’s hand back and stared at her intently. “That baby downstairs, who does it belong to? I know it’s not yours or Benjamin because he looks nothing like either of you, except for that weird eye color, which by the way I find mildly disturbing.”

“That’s my son.” The tone in Rhiannon’s voice became a little more defensive. “Or at least he will be.”

“What does that mean? You know, ever since we got here, you’ve been barking out orders to Keith and I, and we’ve been following them because we really had no choice, following blindly.” Shaun pointed to the door. “And now Ben’s out there, all fucked up and I am getting sick of hearing riddles and vague bullshit. So if you want my help, you need to start coming clean and explaining things to me, or else I am going to walk out, go get Keith and find a way the hell out of here.”

Rhiannon drew in a long breath and the expression on her face changed, softening up. “Fair enough. If I expect your help then I should be totally honest with you.” Her hand started trembling and the slipped it into one of the pockets of the jacket she had thrown on. “The soul of my son, little Ben… or Burnley as he is now called, is locked away inside that child. When Benjamin brought him here, he thought that he was protecting him, but the truth was that he was bringing him right to me. He was drawn here, as are the others who are on their way, to bear witness to the most miraculous thing that will ever happen.” She lowered her voice. “A soul, far away, trapped in eternal darkness will be brought back into the light, reborn, and a life to start again anew. My son will be returned to me…to us.” 

“That’s insane. You can’t bring people back from the dead, Rhiannon. It goes against everything that is decent.” Shaun said curtly. 

“Oh but I can! The process has already begun. Harnessing power from the visor, I was able to contain Burnley’s soul safely within the child, but now that Ben has destroyed it, the soul must be set free or else the world will be ripped apart.” Lowering her eyes, Rhiannon approached Shaun again and then looked up at him. “I brought you here and saved you from a world that was on the brink of destruction. If this isn’t done, if Burnley’s soul isn’t set free, then it’s going to happen all over again, and this world also will be destroyed. We will lose everything. You have to help me Shaun. If we do this, then we can have Benjamin back, Prox can be our new home. Everything that we’ve always wanted, right here in front of us. If we work together, we can have everything that we want. All of us. If we don’t free his soul, then that’s the ending, for everyone.”

Shaun shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was a dream, it had to be. Nothing this insane could ever happen. He was safe and sound back in his bed, curled up next to Leanne and the dogs, peacefully snoring after a late night. That had to be it; there could be no other possible, logical explanation. “What do I have to do?” He said, sighing. “How do we free a spirit?”

A look of relief washed across Rhiannon’s face. She knew she had him. “It’s simple, really. A life for a life. The moment the last breath leaves the body of that child, the soul will be free. Order will be restored. Prox and Burnley will both be saved.”

Staring at her in disbelief, Shaun’s mouth dropped open. “Are you fucking nuts? You’re talking about murdering a baby! No. Rhiannon this is… wow… no, it’s wrong!” Reaching out, he grabbed hold of her wrist and held onto it tightly. “I don’t know whose baby you manipulated Benjamin into kidnapping for you, but there is no way in hell that I am going to let you OR BEN hurt an innocent kid. You should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking of something like this.”

“Let go of me!” Rhiannon shouted, trying to squirm away from Shaun. “You want Benjamin back, I know that you do. I saw him kiss you there in the corridor, I know how you felt when his lips touched yours, so don’t pretend anymore. You love Benjamin too! I don’t blame you for feeling this way, it’s how everyone who is around him feels, there’s no need for guilt or shame. Just accept it Shaun. But… unless we do this, there isn’t going to be any of ‘Ben’ left! That thing that’s inside of him, that devil or angel or whatever the fuck it is, is eating away at him from the inside. Let him have his son back, his son can free him from this.. this.. evil. That’s all I am asking.”

“I knew that something was up when Ben put that baby in my arms and told me to look after it. He wanted to get it as far away from you as possible. I am such an idiot for not just taking it and getting the hell out of here. Jesus fucking Christ what am I supposed to do now?” Shaun glared at Rhiannon and gripped her wrist tighter. “I can’t let you go, you’re bat shit crazy, I can’t take you to Benjamin because I don’t know what’s going on with him, and you probably find a way to manipulate him anyway, damn it, I wish I had a little help here.” He fell silent, lost in thought for a few moments. “Okay…you’re going to lead me to the communication room and we’re going to place a call back to Keith. We’re going to send him the coordinates and he’s going to get here and we can deal with this together. Got it?”

Rhiannon laughed. “You can place a call back to Eden, but I assure you that he won’t answer.”

“What? Why not?” Shaun asked, suddenly frightened.

“Because they are already here. I told you that they were all lured here. Keith, Thomas, Dustin, Selene. Everyone who plays a part in the ending is in place now. Even as we speak, Benjamin’s watch dog stands outside the gate, welcoming them to the final chapter. Take a deep breath, breathe in and smell it. That lingering scent that hangs in the air like a morbid perfume of rot and decay, that’s Death, and it’s coming for them. No one is going to help you Shaun. Not Keith, not Benjamin, no one. You are on your own. What you do next is the most important decision that you will ever make. What will it be? To save the life of one, or save the lives of many?”

Gripping hold of her wrist, Shaun pulled his arm back and with full force threw Rhiannon down. She stumbled backwards and fell against the couch. “I don’t know anything about this planet, or the people that live here on it, but I do know that I love Benjamin, but it’s not in the way that you think. I don’t want to let innocent people die, and I sure as hell don’t want to lose Benjamin, but I am not willing to spill the blood of a god damn baby!” He glared down at her, feeling the anger rising and his voice growing louder and louder. “What’s wrong with you? You’re a mother! You shouldn’t even be thinking this way. Benjamin loved his son, more than you ever will, and I know for a fact that he won’t hurt that kid either. You’re the only threat here, Rhiannon, and I won’t let you take one step out of this room. When Benjamin comes looking for us, wondering where you are, I am going to tell him exactly what you’ve done.”

Pushing the hair away from her eyes, Rhiannon slowly sat back up, glaring at Shaun. “Yes, I am a mother, and this is why I choose to do this. My son is everything to me, and I won’t let you or anyone else get in the way of bringing him back.” With a loud cry, she sprang to her feet, and slipped her hand out of her pocket. Shaun didn’t have time to react, much less see the knife that she withdrew from where it had been concealed before she pulled her arm back and plunged into his stomach. The blade cut through layers of skin and muscle, deep into the depths of his internal organs, neatly slicing through and sinking it right up to the handle. A bright red fountain of blood shot up and splashed against Shaun’s face, splashing against his cheeks and dripping off his jaw. Rhiannon gripped hold of the blade tightly and in one fluid motion pulled it down as far as she could reach, neatly slicing his abdomen open from navel to groin. Shaun doubled over as she pulled the blade out and clutched at his mid-section, trying his best to keep everything on the inside from spilling out. A thick river of blood flowed out and down over her hand, as she moved to stab him again. This time, he saw it coming and was able to step out of the way, avoiding a second blow. Stumbling across the room, he tried to make it to the door, but she was fast, moving quickly and overturning furniture to get to him. Slamming his hand on the electronic plate, he saw it open up, and the empty hallway beyond and then there was a blinding sensation in his back as she drove the knife deep into him from behind, and he immediately dropped down to his knees. Pitching forward, Shaun tried to hold himself up on all fours and fight her off, but she was too strong, fueled by raw emotion and rage, she continued to plunge the weapon into his back over and over, the blade shattering vertebrae and puncturing his lungs until he finally gave in and dropped down, laying face first on the floor.

Looking up, Shaun could see the hall in front of him, through the open door, freedom was so close and yet so far away. Stretching his fingers out, he tried to pull himself up, but he found that the lower half of his body wouldn’t respond. She had destroyed his spine in her furious rage, and he was paralyzed. Carefully stepping around him, Rhiannon grabbed his ankles and pulled him back into the room, leaving a bright red trail of smeared blood in the doorway, and a glaring red handprint outside in the corridor. Sealing the doors behind her, she then retreated back into the room and went into the bathroom. From where he was laying, Shaun could hear the sound of water running. She was washing his blood off of her hands. He looked down at the ever widening crimson pool that was spreading out from underneath him and closed his eyes. The pain from each breath was excruciating and it was an incredible effort to draw another one. The numbness from the lower half of his body was starting to slowly make its way up, and he knew that he would be dead within minutes. All he could do was lay there and listen to the sound of the water running. 

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get air into his lungs without pain, but it was useless. Every single breath hurt worse than the last, but he knew that he had to keep trying, he had to hold on for just a little while longer, but he didn’t know why. Feeling a soft tap on his arm, Shaun’s eyes fluttered open and he saw Rhiannon standing in front of him, all cleaned up, with her hair nicely done now and even a bit of make-up applied. If it wasn’t for the pallid color to her skin, she could almost look normal. She tapped the tip of her boot on his arm, until he looked up at her. “Shaun, I want to tell you that what happened here is a tragedy. I really did want you and Keith to be with Benjamin, that wasn’t a lie. I thought that maybe you could somehow bring him around. When he kissed you, I wasn’t jealous at all, but instead hopeful, thinking that maybe the person he once was, was still in there, but I was wrong. All I could see was those terrible and yet beautiful amber eyes gazing at me while he ended my life, and I knew, I just fucking new that he was lost. Dustin and the others who are with him, they are going to try and save him too, but there’s nothing of him left. He will kill them, and I am truly sorry.” Carefully making her way around his body, Rhiannon opened the door and stepped outside, looking down the empty corridor. “I liked you Shaun, ever since Ben first introduced us, I knew that you were a decent person. Benjamin knows good people when he sees them; he takes them in and cares for them. Your heart is in the right place, but you have to know that I had to stop you, because you were getting in between me and my son. Nothing will stop me from bringing him back, not you, not Benjamin…no one.” Slipping the knife back into her pocket, she closed the door and walked out, leaving him in darkness.

I held onto the steel bars of the gate tightly, my hands freezing cold, clutching them as hard as I could. The first thing I heard was the harsh sound of metal clashing. It rang out into the night like some sort of warning bell, echoing loudly and painful to the ears. I knew that this was the sound of Brock’s sword crashing into Selene’s scythe. There was a bright flash of purple electricity that illuminated the gate in front of me, and then I heard Brock scream. It was the worst sound I had ever heard in my entire life. It was a mixture of pain and agony, drawn from the very depths of his soul and let out with such intense force that I felt it was going to shatter my heart. I started to turn around when I felt Keith come up behind me and slam my body back against the cold gates. He shook his head at me. “What did he say to you? HE FUCKING TOLD YOU NOT TO TURN AROUND!” I felt his hand press against my back. “Get those god damn gates open and let’s get going or else we’re end up like Thomas out here!” Grabbing his arm, I threw it off of me. 

“Don’t you ever say his name out loud to me ever again, Keith!” I shouted. “You don’t get the privilege. You are the reason he’s dead.” My hand fell away from the gates and I felt my fingers involuntary curl up into a fist. I couldn’t believe the audacity that he had mentioning Thomas at a time like this. He was dead, left cold and alone in a vehicle in the middle of nowhere. He wasn’t even going to get a proper burial, and it was all Keith’s fault. 

“Whatever, get the fuck over it and move.” He snapped. Pushing past me, he grabbed the steel bars of the gate and pulled them open far enough for us to squeeze through. Annoyed and angry, I followed him through and made it to the first step when I then heard the sound of flapping wings. The sky which had brightened up with the snow, now grew immensely dark, almost like someone had pulled a black sheet over it. Behind me, I could still hear the clash of Brock fighting Selene, and every time that their weapons slammed into each other, a brilliant spark would illuminate the steps in front of us, giving us one brief second of light to find our way. It was extremely difficult running away from Brock, who was trying his best to keep Selene occupied so that we had a way in. He made it painfully obvious that he didn’t care about going on and existing anymore, I clearly wasn’t enough for him. Burnley prevented Brock from taking his own life a year ago back at the FEC base, convincing him that there was more to live for than just one person, and yet here I was, in the same position, and all I was able to do was turn my back on him and walk away, allowing him to give up that life. I was returning all the borrowed time that Burnley had given him. How had things gotten to the position where Brock would choose a murderer and rapist over me? “Fucking Dustin, will you move?” Keith shouted at me again, and I had to will my legs and feet to move onto the next step. The darkness that surrounded us was stifling, claustrophobic, and occasionally I would hear a muffled cry of pain from Brock somewhere behind us, making it feel truly nightmarish. 

Half way to the entrance, I looked up and saw the silver shape of the door ahead of us. Only a few more steps and we would be there. I was starting to feel hopeful. We could make it inside, and find Ben, save him stop the world from falling apart. All I had to do was make it a few feet. Our eyes started to grow accustom to the darkness now and we moved quicker, taking two or three steps at a time. Keith was a few paces ahead of me, and I kept an eye on him as I moved along the path. I couldn’t let him out of my sight. I didn’t know if I could trust him or not. It was when we were nearly to the door when all of a sudden the distinct ping of metal breaking rang out into the night. I stopped dead in my tracks. I heard that exact same sound before. Burnley’s sword had broken. Slowly I turned around, I was aware of Keith yelling something at me, but I couldn’t hear it. At that moment, clouds moved away and for an instant, the clearing below us was light up with a beautiful silvery glow from the moon. Down below us, I saw Brock look up, and for a moment our eyes met, locked onto one another and I heard him whisper inside my head. Why did you turn around? That one moment of distraction was all that she needed. With a swipe of her scythe, she brought Brock down to his knees, the blade singing as it sliced through the air. The broken sword which he had in his left hand clattered down uselessly to the ground, landing in the new fallen snow. For a moment I wondered why he did not hold the blade in his right hand, which was the dominant one. It was ridiculous to think that he would give himself a handicap at a time like this, when our lives were on the line. Then I remembered, and felt terrible. Brock’s right hand had been completely shattered, one year ago, never fully healed and it was all my fault. The dark shape of Death slowly walked around him, as the crows high in the trees calling out in triumph once again. Slowly shaking his head, I could see a look of disappointment on his face. I knew he didn’t feel that way because he was defeated, he was disappointed in me. Selene grabbed a handful of his sandy colored hair in her pale white hand and forced his head back. My heart sank. I couldn’t let this happen. I took one step down and felt Keith grab me again by the shoulder. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The moment my foot hit the lower step, Death looked right up at me, with her pale black eyes and smiled. She twirled the scythe around and angled the blade below Brock’s neck. I could see that there were tears running down Brock’s cheeks now, and I couldn’t help but to wonder if they were tears of sorrow or joy. He had wished his life to be over for so long, and now he was getting exactly what he wanted. I stopped moving, I knew that I couldn’t make it to him in time. Keith still kept his hand on my shoulder, a futile effort to stop me from making a mistake that I already had made. Selene pulled her hood up over her head, concealing her face from the moonlight and tightly gripped the scythe. I saw Brock look at me, his eyes filled with extreme sadness, the likes I had never seen before. I felt those brown orbs stare right through me, giving me an accusing look. I couldn’t blame him. I may not have physically put in there at Death’s hand, but I was the reason why he was there. Now I knew why he didn’t want me to turn around. The memory of this moment would forever stain my heart and cast a shadow on my soul; it was the day that I killed everything that was right and just in my life. The crows laughed. Selene’s arm twitched slightly, with the smallest of movements, and the silver blade bit deeply into the underside of Brock’s neck. I watched in horror, not being able to turn away as she gave the weapon a quick yank and let it slip easily through his throat and spine, neatly decapitating my best friend, and the only one who loved me implicitly for who I was. My hands started to tremble and my heart jumped into my throat as Brock’s body hit the ground with a quiet thump, sinking into the deep snow with his head falling shortly after. “Oh my fucking god… NO!” I screamed, watching in horror as it all played out in front of me, like some sort of movie. I didn’t have much time to grieve or absorb the shock of it all before his body slowly started to fade to gray and turn to what looked like ashes right in front of my eyes. The wind picked up and caught the dust, mixing it with the snow that was still falling down around us and swirled it through the air, like some sort of snow globe. I reached out, extending my hand in front of me and caught some of the tiny flakes in my palm. I closed a fist tight around them, trying as hard as I could to not break down. The darkness started to descend down upon us once more, and I saw Selene take a step toward us, pausing for a moment to kick the broken sword out of the way with her black boots.

“Dustin.” Keith whispered. “Snap out of it, we have to go. We wasted too much time already, we should have been in there, come on… we need to move.” Tugging on my jacket, Keith pulled and pulled, but I remained still, my eyes focused on where I had last seen Death.

“Burnley was right.” I said quietly. “Death is coming for me. She’s here already. All I have to do is wait for her.” With numb fingers I slowly opened my hand where I had caught the snowflake and saw that it was no longer there, but a single tiny droplet of blood stained my skin instead. “It’s okay Brock. I won’t let you go alone.” I heard the footstep of her boot fall softly on the first step. The crows were calling.

“FUCKING ASSHOLE! Get moving!” Keith screamed and moved around in front of me. The wind had strangely started to pick up, moving faster by the moment, and the snowfall was growing heavier by the second. It was near white out conditions. “Listen to me you son of a bitch… You don’t get to sit here and take the easy way out, okay? Thomas, and Brock, they gave up their lives so that you can get inside here. Thomas believed that you were going to be the one to save Benjamin, and if you think for one god damn moment that I am going to let you break your promise to him, then you’re wrong. You need to turn around and get to that door. I don’t give a shit what kind of feelings you’re having right now, all I know is that you’re not supposed to die here.”

I lowered my head. She was on the second step now, dragging her scythe along behind her. I could hear the sound of the metal grating against the stone. “He didn’t want me to turn around… and I did.” I looked up to Keith, and his strangely misshapen broken nose. “Brock didn’t want me to see him die and I did… I couldn’t keep a simple promise to him, there’s no way I am going to be able to save Ben. Not now, not ever. I want my story to be over.” I nodded in Selene’s direction. “She’s the author of this story, she knows how this all ends.”

“Oh my God Dustin now is not the time for this! Either you get up and get on your feet and move towards that door or I will fucking drag you there myself.” The wind was howling all around us now, and I was shivering uncontrollably from the cold. I didn’t think that I would ever be warm again. “Okay I get it, you lost two of your friends and now you want to lie down and accept your fate and die here as well, but I don’t. Thomas had a wife, and kids, right? Do you think that they will be safe if Rhiannon succeeds in her plan to bring her son back? Will they be safe from Burnley, from Benjamin?”

I felt angered and upset by Keith’s words. I knew what he was doing; he was trying to use my own emotions against me, to get me up and moving. It was a valiant attempt, but something inside of me just refused to listen to him. Prox was on the verge of ripping itself apart, 2 of my friends were dead, and I wanted to go along with them. It wasn’t fair that they were made to suffer the way that they did, both choosing to leave me behind and deal with this mess on my own. I felt so small and insignificant. I held up my shaking hands and stared at them. Dull red splotches of Thomas’s blood still stained my skin, reminding me of the high price that he had paid to protect us. His wedding ring felt unusually heavy and tight on my finger, almost unbearable so I slipped it off, and held it tightly in my hand. Looking down, I saw Selene still ascending the steps, taking them one at a time, with her black robes swirling all around, like black pools of ink, churning with darkness. Then something caught my eye further down the path. I squinted and tried to focus on it through the falling snow. It was a man, casually leaning against the vehicle. Gasping, I leaned forward and grabbed Keith’s arm and pointed down the path. “Look there! Do you see that! It’s Thomas!”

Looking out in the direction which I was pointing, Keith shook his head. “Dustin there is no one there! You’re freaking seeing things, come on man, we need to move. If you’re not up on your feet and moving in 5 seconds, I swear I am going on without you. You can sit here and die, have your ghosts and become one of them if you want, but there are still people inside of here who are alive and need us. If you won’t help them then I will.”

As his words rang out in my ears, I tried to focus on the figure standing casually against the vehicle down below. It was Thomas, or at least his spirit. He wasn’t dressed in the same clothing as he was earlier, but in the old Messenger uniform from the Eden base, the same outfit he had been wearing when I first met him. Our eyes met for a moment and I heard his voice inside of my head. ‘Dustin, please take care of my family. Give my children time to grow up and have a life of their own. Help Lizzie find the red rose that blooms in the greenhouse. It’s there, hidden away far out of sight, but it’s there. She needs to see how beautiful it will become.’ I wanted to call out to him, I wanted to scream and shout at him, but as quickly as he appeared, he vanished. I pulled myself to my feet, and heard Keith’s boots behind me crunch in the snow as he turned around and stared sprinting towards the steel doors. Death was only a few feet away from me now, and I could see the hollow black orbs of her eyes staring me down, and feel the spark of electricity in the air from her scythe crack and snap all around me. Keith had now made it to the doors and was calling back as Selene tightened her grip on the scythe. Standing my ground in front of her, I watched as the snow swirled around us, and the trees bent and shifted by the force of the horrendous winds. Almost right on top of me now, I saw her mouth twist into a vicious smile and plant her feet into the snow, in an effort to bring the weapon crashing into my body. Clutching Thomas’s wedding ring in the palm of my hand, I summoned every bit of strength that I had inside of me and shouted above the howling winds. “Selene, I forgive you.” I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand so tightly that I could feel them bite into the flesh. The scythe started to move through the air. I could hear the blade whistling, singing to me as it prepared to hit its mark. High above, Keith managed to get the doors to Dawn open and was shouting down to me, but I could only barely hear him now. I thought about Thomas and Lizzie on their wedding day, and how happy they were. There was a spark in the young couple’s eyes that gave them, and all of Prox hope, hope that all the bloodshed, wars and needless killing was at and end. A new beginning for everyone, including Ben and I. There were people depending on me now, I had to stand firm and take responsibility for them. I needed to find courage and strength in myself to see this through to the end. 

I glanced up to see the tip of the scythe almost about to descend upon me, the very weapon that Selene had used to kill her son, and I knew that this wasn’t going to be my death. Not yet. I still had something to accomplish. Yanking my arm back, I let out a loud cry and with all the strength I had inside of me, I threw Thomas’s wedding ring at Selene. I don’t know why I did it, it just felt like the right thing to do. There were so many memories in that ring from Thomas and Lizzie, from Ben and I that gave it power and made it feel stronger than any weapon. The tiny trinket sailed through the air, un-wavered by the high winds and hit her directly in the center of the chest. Immediately, Selene dropped the scythe, and it clattered to the steps. The purple crackling electricity that surrounded it slowly went dark and faded away, and the metal shattered like tempered glass, splitting into a hundred shimmering pieces at her feet. Holding her hand against her chest, Selene’s sleeves had fallen back and I could see that she was clutching and clawing at the spot where the ring had hit. There was a noxious scent in the air now, which smelled vaguely of burning feathers. I took a few steps back, as she stared me down, wild eyed and furious. She reached out for me, her fingers twisted and arching, and started to scream. The sound of her voice was high pitched and painful, burrowing right into my brain and making me feel like I wanted to slam my head into the concrete to make it stop. Covering my ears, I could do nothing but stand there and watch her writhe and scream in pain, mesmerized by her torment. Keith had descended the stairs now and was pulling on my arm, trying to get my attention. I turned to him and saw a pleading look in his eyes, begging me to walk away. The truth was that I didn’t want to, and it wasn’t because I wanted to die. Selene was my friend, she was part of our family and now I felt as though I was losing her too. She had lost her own son, and taken Ben’s so many years ago, in an effort to make things right, but it didn’t work. The FEC lied to her and she spent the rest of her time trying to fix things, to redeem herself and take care of those who she loved. She wasn’t just Thomas’s mother, but a mother to all of us, and losing her made me feel like I was losing yet another part of myself that I wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. I knew that I had to though. Just like I gave up Thomas, and Brock…now it was time for me to let go of her too. Taking step back away from her, I nodded to Keith and followed him up the stairs. She was still screaming when we reached the platform at the top. Brock’s voice echoed in my ears, begging me not to turn around, but I did once again. I couldn’t help it. Keith slipped in through the doors and I took one last look down. Selene had fallen to her knees, still holding her hands tightly against her chest. The cowl had fallen away from her head, and I could see the terrible look of pain reflected in her black eyes. She noticed me looking at her and slowly pulled her hands away, her sleeves whipping in the wind as she stretched her arms out to her sides and leaned her head back. The long, dark curls of her hair flowed out around her as the snow slowly descended, covering her in a blanket of white. I moved to follow Keith in the door, when I saw her lift her head slightly. My eyes met hers and she smiled at me, just as the crows that had been gathering flew in from behind her, plunging into her body, diving and scratching their way through. Hundreds of the black winged birds descended, scratching and clawing at her flesh, as they swooped down and started to fly up the steps toward us. Their loud calls echoed loudly as their talons swiped at her, consuming her in a thick black cloud of feathers and blood. She had stopped screaming now, and all I could see was wings, thousands of them now, with sharp beaks coming right for us. I grabbed the door and yanked it open, just as the first of the birds hit the steel with a loud thud and crashed into it. I threw it shut behind me and leaned against it, looking at the wide eyed Keith in front of me as the thudding sound grew louder and louder. Each of those birds was slamming themselves into the door in turn, fully intent on getting in. My heart was pounding in my throat and I closed my eyes, trying my best to drown out that horrible, horrible noise. 

After several minutes it stopped, and we stood there in the hallway, both of us at a loss for words. “What the hell was that?” He asked, as he started pacing back and forth. 

I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I don’t think that we stopped her. Maybe we slowed her down for a little bit, but I have a feeling that she’s going to come after us again.”

Keith ran his fingers through his blond hair. “Do you think that she can get in here?” He was visibly shaken up by what he had just seen.

Taking a step away from the door, I looked down at my own shaking hands and saw that there were a few light scratches across the top of them. “If Ben turned her into this thing, and put her here to guard Dawn, then I am pretty sure that she can go wherever the hell that she wants. I think that we weakened her, we should probably get going before we find out.” I took a few steps forward, past Keith when I noticed that he wasn’t following me. I stopped and turned around. “What’s up?”

“Dustin, you know why we are here, right?” He asked, cautiously. 

“Of course I do. We’re going to take out Rhiannon, stop her from bringing Burnley back to life and save Benjamin.” I smiled, trying to lighten the mood a little. “I took notes.”

The expression on his face was serious, and I instantly regretted trying to make a joke out of it. “I don’t want to be the one to bring this up, but the more I see what’s going on here, the more I am starting to think that maybe ‘saving’ Benjamin isn’t going to be how it goes.” Keith’s face lost some of its color as he spoke. “I love Benjamin a lot, he’s the closest thing I have to family, and I really want to get him and Shaun and get the hell out of here, but if he’s this far gone… I mean, if he really changed that woman into that thing out there, there’s no telling what he might do to us, and if we find that there isn’t a way to bring him back…”

“Stop it!” I yelled. “Don’t even finish that sentence. There is always another way. What you’re suggesting is completely out of the question. You don’t know him like I do! I am part of the reason that he changed and it’s my responsibility to bring him back. Back on Earth after he sacrificed himself for me, I died inside. I let the anger and guilt build up in me and turn me into something that I wasn’t. That is what is happening to him right now. Even through all those terrible things that I did, I kept seeing him everywhere, because he stayed with me, in spirit, never leaving my side and reassuring me that I could be saved. He was the only one who believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. I am not going to give up on him. Not now, not ever.”

Keith stared at me like I was an insane, raving madman. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said quietly. “Benjamin never sacrificed himself for you. That never happened.”

“Yes he did! Up on the rooftop of the hospital, when he still was the Shepherd of the Damned! He found a way to fight it, and use his powers to save me from losing my own soul. That was the day that he died, but no one knew about it but me and Brock. We were the only ones there. All the news reported that he went missing, but we knew the truth. Ben sacrificed himself, ripping his own heart out for me.” As I spoke, I felt rage starting to build up in me. I couldn’t understand why Keith was bringing this up, or why he was questioning me about this, it didn’t make any sense at all. I just wanted to move on, get this done and save Ben, why was this suddenly becoming an issue. 

Keith kept staring at me. “Maybe that’s what you think happened, but it definitely wasn’t. Benjamin was sick. He died on a tour bus after a show following a long illness that none of us knew about.” Keith stepped forward and put his hand on my shoulder. “Dustin, Aaron and I were with him and Rhiannon when it happened. His son was there with him too, Aaron had to take little Ben away from Benjamin as he pleaded with him to let him stay. We tried to get him help, but he refused. I saw him draw his last breath, he didn’t ‘disappear’ or sacrifice himself for you…we buried him. None of what you are saying ever happened. The only person who believes this is you. How long have you been telling yourself this?”

I moved away from him and started backing down the hallway. “You’re wrong.” That was all I could say, I couldn’t think of any other words. I was furious that he would question my memories of Ben’s last moments, and yet, there was doubt that something just didn’t add up. I was afraid that he could be right, and if that was the case, then what was the truth? “You’re lying to me.”

“I wish that I was. That’s why I was so shocked to hear that Benjamin was here and alive. We all mourned him for a long time.” Keith paused, and I could tell that he was trying to deal with conflicting emotions. “Then his son was taken… after that, things just got worse…”

“No. I refuse to listen to this. You’re wrong. This whole thing is wrong. I know what happened. I know what Ben is. He didn’t die in some crappy piece of shit tour bus, he died in my arms! That’s how it happened!!” My mind raced and reeled with memories now, from a life that felt so far away. I remembered every single detail of those days, before we ended up on Prox. I could recall the first time that Ben kissed me in the hotel room, and the first time that I saw those awful black wings and red eyes of the Shepherd of the Damned for the first time. It was in that hotel room that I handed my heart and soul over to him and lost myself. I fought so hard, trying my best not to fall in love with him, but the fates were against us, and we ended up becoming so close that it actually physically hurt being apart from one another. It was because of this love that he ended up losing his immortality and sacrificing everything that he had to save me. These were real feelings and emotions, they just had to be. Something like this couldn’t be just made up or fabricated. I kept stepping back, further and further away from Keith. I refused to believe or listen to him. Then all at once it hit me. My first memory of Prox. Waking up in intensive care at Eden. Thomas had saved me from the FEC. They had put a visor on me and they were fucking around with my brain, making me see things, making me feel things. Oh my god… I bit down on my lower lip. What if none of that really did happen? What if it was all some sort of fucked up story that the FEC was feeding me trying to get information out of me about Ben? Had I been living a lie this entire time? What if Ben never really did love me? What if it was just all in my head? I looked back over to Keith. “If Ben died as you said he did… what happened to me? What happened to my boys and Starset?”

He was about to answer me when suddenly there was a faint tapping sound at the end of the hallway. We both looked at each other and then started off in the direction of the sound, the conversation momentarily halted. Part of me was glad for the distraction, I didn’t want to deal with these feelings, not right now, not when we were about to confront Ben. I found it incredibly odd that Keith would bring up a sensitive topic at this time. Why now, and why here? Did he feel as though he wasn’t going to make it out? I had too many questions to ask, but I knew that now wasn’t the time. Together we walked down the corridor, following the twisting turns to the residential section of Dawn. A sealed door near the end of the hall was the source of the pounding noise which grew quieter as we approached it. My eyes went down to the floor, which had a puddle of what looked like drying blood and a handprint seeping out from underneath the door. I looked to Keith and he withdrew his weapon. “Is that thing going to work, I thought Selene disabled it?” I whispered.

“She did, but she only temporarily drained the power. It’s been slowly building up ever since I put it away.” He flipped it over and showed me the battery pack. “There’s enough charge stored in it now for one good, clean shot. After that, it’s done for, for a while. One shot, that’s all you get.” He handed it over to me. “Do you want it?”

I shook my head and pushed it back to him. “No I hate guns. Just hang onto it.” He nodded to me and prepared to open the doors, carefully stepping out of the way of the spilled blood. “Wait!” I said suddenly, grabbing his hand. “Just do me a favor and make sure that you know what you’re aiming for before you pull the damn trigger. We can’t go wasting that one shot; our lives might depend on it.”

Smiling, Keith pushed his broken glasses back up onto his nose. “Don’t worry; if something’s coming after us, you can be damn sure that I won’t miss. No matter what…or who it is.” He sounded unusually confident and that frightened me. 

Placing his hand on the panel in front of the door, I took a step back out of caution, not wanting to be surprised by accidently walking in on something that I shouldn’t have. The moment the doors slid open, my eyes dropped down to the floor where I saw the body of a man lying face down, with his arm outstretched, as if he had been pounding on the steel, trying to get it open. There was a massive amount of blood all around him, and I could see 5 or 6 stab wounds on his back. The lacerations were severe, and one was centered directly on top of his spinal column. The blade that had stabbed him went in extremely deep and I could see bits of bone protruding though layers of flesh. I knew right away that this was a vicious assault that could only have been done out of extreme rage. Glancing over at Keith, I was about to ask him a question when all of a sudden, the gun fell out of his hand and he dropped down to the floor, his skin turning ashen white. With a shaking hand, he reached out and pulled the lifeless man’s arm away from his face. “No no no no no no no” he repeated over and over. It was Shaun, the person that he came here for. Reaching out, he grabbed his wrist and felt for a pulse. I lowered myself down to the floor, not quite knowing what to do. Keith looked at me and breathed a small sigh of relief. “He’s alive, but barely. We have to move him, get him inside until we can find out where the medical wing is. Maybe they have supplies there that can save him if we hurry.”

“We can’t move him.” I said flatly. “Look at that wound, whatever was used to stab him went right in and severed his vertebrae. He’s paralyzed, and if we try to move him around, we might end up doing more damage, possibly even killing him.”

“So what are we supposed to do? Sit here and let him bleed out all over the floor?” Keith pointed out into the hallway. “There’s got to be some sort of supplies here, lots of stuff to fix him up, we just have to find them. Listen Dustin, this isn’t going to be a repeat of your friend Thomas where he bleeds out right in front of us. Shaun doesn’t deserve to die like that, so you’re going to either help me move him or get the hell out of my way.” 

I reached forward and grabbed the front of Keith’s shirt, pulling him towards me, over Shaun’s body. “First thing… I told you NEVER to bring up Thomas in front of me again. YOU are the reason why he’s dead, and Brock too, not me, so you don’t get to even say his name in my presence. If you do, so help me God I will hit you so hard that I will break more than your nose.” As I spoke, Keith went motionless, completely startled and frightened by my sudden outburst. “Secondly, I know he’s your friend, Shaun is my friend too so don’t go thinking that I think anything less of him. One single person’s life isn’t more important than another’s. We lost too many people as it is now, and I am not going to lose another one if I can help it.” I pointed down to the wounds on Shaun’s back. “Now listen to me, we’re going to get him help, but we have to be cautious and do it the right way, or else we’re going to put ourselves in danger too. Do you understand me?”

Nodding, Keith looked away from me and I let him go. He sank back down to the floor, and leaned up against the wall. “What do we have to do?” He asked timidly.

I stood up from the floor and entered the room, slowly walking around. Tables and chairs were thrown around and the room looked completely ransacked. I took a moment to go into the bathroom and noticed that there were splashes of water all over the sink, and towel lying on the floor nearby that was stained with blood. Grabbing the piece of material, I brought it out and showed it to Keith. “This is still fresh. Someone did this to him and then cleaned up afterwards, it wasn’t too long ago, which means that they are somewhere in the base. We don’t know where they are, we don’t know where Rhiannon is being kept and we sure as hell don’t know where Ben is.”

Taking off his glasses, Keith rubbed his eyes. “Fuck Benjamin and Rhiannon. For all we know, one of them could have done this. Shaun is the most important thing right now.” He mumbled.

“I know!” I snapped back at him. “Just give me one goddam minute to think.”

Silence fell over the room; the only sound that could be heard was that of Shaun’s labored breathing. The moment that I stepped inside of Dawn, I had this terrible feeling inside of me, that I wasn’t going to make it back out. For so long after we defeated the FEC and restored peace to Prox, Ben refused to come to Dawn. At first I thought it was because he hated Aaron and had some grudge against him, and then I realized that perhaps it was because he knew Rhiannon was here and he didn’t want to deal with a past that should be buried and forgotten. But now, now I knew the real reason why he refused to come here. There was a terrible presence to this base, a unknown evil that surrounded it, choking off all light and life that tried to get inside. I could feel it the moment that I stepped inside. This place wasn’t good. It felt like a tomb, and for some of us, that’s exactly what it was becoming. I looked over to Shaun lying on the floor. I didn’t know him very well, but I had known that Ben liked him a lot, and greatly respected him. Why he and Keith had been forced to come to Prox, I didn’t know, but no one deserved to die like that, face down on a concrete floor. I had to do something about it; I wanted to save his life. “Alright here’s what we are going to do. This base isn’t like any other messenger base I’ve been in before, so I am not sure where the medical wing is, but I am going to try and see if I can find it. Once I am there, I can bring back all the supplies that we need to stabilize him and get him out of here. I know that Dawn is one of the best facilities for medicine, and there’s got to be something in there that will save his life. You stay here, Keith and keep an eye on Shaun in case he wakes up again so that he will know that everything will be okay, and also to be sure that the person who did this doesn’t come back to finish off the job. I will be as quick as I can and be back before you know it.”

Rising to his feet, Keith walked across the room and picked up the weapon from where he had dropped it. “No. That’s not how we’re going to do this.” Coming over to me, I could see the extreme look of concern on his face. “You’re forgetting one very important thing here. The most dangerous thing, actually. Benjamin. If what Thomas said about him turning into the Shepherd of the Damned is true, and how insane he is, then we can’t risk you going out there and running into him by accident. You’re too emotional now, with the two them dying and I can’t be sure that you will be able to think clearly. So I am going to get the supplies, not you. Benjamin has the capabilities of fucking you up, and I won’t risk my friends life on that.”

I let out a long sigh. I didn’t want to even think about Ben right now, not while Shaun’s life was hanging by a thread. “That’s not going to happen.”

“You don’t know that for sure. If Benjamin is bat shit crazy, then there’s no telling what he will do. If there is a confrontation between the two of you, I am afraid that you won’t make it back, and then where will we be? I won’t have any way of knowing what happened to you, and meanwhile Shaun is going to bleed to death while we wait. No, you’re not going anywhere.” Stepping forward, Keith offered me the gun. “You’re wrong. I do feel responsible for Thomas’s death, and it’s tearing me up inside. I don’t want anyone else to die, and I know you don’t either, so please let me do this.”

Gingerly, I took the weapon from Keith’s hand and sighed. “You don’t even know what kind of supplies to bring back.” I said feebly. I knew that the decision was already made. Anything I said after this was just a pathetic failure, but I had to keep trying. 

Turning away from me, Keith grabbed an empty backpack that had been thrown out of one of the closets. “I’ll bring back the entire supply cabinet with me if I have to.” I watched helplessly as he slung the back pack over his shoulder and started heading for the door. Reaching the place where Shaun was laying, he bent down and took hold of his hand for a moment, and whispered to him. “Hey buddy, I am not sure if you can hear me but, we’re going to make it out of here and back home, just hold on for me. I am going to run out and get you a big Band-Aid to patch you up. Dustin is here, remember him? Dustin Bates, that loser in a bowtie from Starset that we played with two summers ago? Yeah he’s here and he’s going to look after you until I get back. Then we’re going to find Benjamin and get the fuck out of here. We will all go home and start recording that new album that we’ve been talking about. The whole band will be back together. You, me, Benjamin, Jasen and Aaron, all of us. It’s going to be spectacular, but we can’t do it without you so just hang in there. Everything will be fine. I promise.”

As he spoke, I heard Brock’s voice echo inside my head. ‘Don’t make promises that you can’t keep.’ I gripped the gun tighter in my hand and tried my best to ignore it. I made my way over to the door and much to his surprise; I reached out and hugged Keith. Pulling his small frame against mine, I knocked him off balance and he nearly fell over from the momentum. I held onto him tightly, trying my best to make the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach go away and give myself a bit of reassurance. I felt him pat me awkwardly on the back and finally I let go of him. “What was that for?” he said, laughing at me. “You know I am literally just going right down the hall and will be back in a few minutes.”

“I.. I am not sure.” I looked away from him for a second. “Maybe it’s a thank you, for not letting me die out there on the steps.”

“You have something important to do here on Prox, Dustin. I don’t know what it is, but I know that it wasn’t your time to die.” Reaching out, Keith tapped on the plastic guitar pick that I had on a chain around my neck. “Other people believed this too, and sacrificed themselves for you. I guess now it’s just my turn to do something right and put my life on the line.” A gentle softness fell over his face. “If I don’t come back, promise me that you will stay with him. Don’t let him die alone, and don’t let him suffer. No one deserves that.”

The weapon in my hand suddenly felt very heavy. I knew what he was asking me to do. I slipped the gun into my pocket, out of sight. I didn’t even want to think about something like that. “I promise.” I whispered. He was asking for so little, I felt that this was a promise that I could keep. Smiling at me, Keith carefully stepped around Shaun and headed out the door. “Wait a moment, Keith…” I called after him. 

He turned around. “Yeah?”

“You never answered my question. What happens to me?” 

Laughing, Keith shook his head at me and I couldn’t help but to notice how dishelved he looked, with the broken glasses and bruised face. “You live Dustin, you live.” With a wave at me, Keith headed down the hall, away from me and into Dawn. I silently wondered if I’d ever see him again, and prayed that he wouldn’t run into Ben. That confrontation was meant for me, and me alone. One way or another, I’d find a way to take care of him. 

I made my way back into the room found a white bed sheet that had been discarded. Gently, I laid it across Shaun’s body to offer him a bit of warmth and eased myself down onto the floor next to him, feeling for a pulse. He was still alive. The subtle motion of my fingertips touching his skin brought a bit of life back into him and I saw his eyelids start to flutter and open. “Where…am I?” He asked through parched lips.

“You’re still here, on Prox, at Dawn.” I noticed him trying to move, and lift his head to look around, but the pain of a shattered spine was a bit too much for him. Defeated, he laid his head back down in a puddle of blood and closed his eyes again. Feeling helpless, I went back into the room and found an old jacket which I balled up into a makeshift thin pillow and slid underneath his head to give him a bit of comfort. 

“Thanks.” He whispered to me. 

I wanted to offer him some water, or try to make him as comfortable as I could, but I knew that moving him would be a big risk and all I could do was sit there with him. The minutes ticked by and felt like hours. “Shaun. I am not sure if you heard him or not, but Keith is here. He went to get some help for you.”

“Yeah. I thought I heard the rustle of pop tart wrappers.” He smiled slightly, through the pain. “He should have stayed, he’s on a fool’s errand.”

Tilting my head to the size, I gazed down over at him in curiosity. “Now why would you say that, Shaun? He is putting his life on the line going out there alone to get supplies to help stabilize you and safe your life. That’s hardly something foolish.”

“Cut the bullshit. We both know that I am going to die here.”

His words lashed out and hit me like a physical punch to the chest. I never heard someone say that they were going to die in such a confident tone. It was almost as if he didn’t care. Instinctively I opened my mouth to say something comforting, but I found that I couldn’t. I had lied to Thomas as he died; I lied to Brock before he went to fight Selene. I didn’t want to do it again. I was tired of lying and I was tired of people dying. It had to stop. Noticing that the sheet was starting to become saturated with blood, I shifted it slightly so that I didn’t have to look at those ever widening stains; they were as bright and vibrant as the guilt that I held inside of me. I decided to change the subject. I didn’t want to talk about dying anymore and maybe if I could get his mind off it, I would feel better too. “I have to know, who did this to you. Was… was it Benjamin?”

Shaun’s eyes slowly opened again, and he looked up at me. “No. Benjamin kissed me.”

My heart skipped a beat. I leaned forward to make sure that I was hearing his words correctly. “What did you say?”

“Ever since I met him, I wanted to know what it felt like, to have that man’s lips touch mine and have him hold me in his arms. I am not gay or anything, I mean, I got a great girl back home who is hot as hell and loves me…but there is just something about Benjamin that kind of draws you in and makes you feel things, things that you just can’t quite understand. I thought about it for a long time; about how his lips would taste, the smell from his skin, even the way that he would hold me in those strong arms... But when the time came, and it happened…..” Shaun’s voice trailed off. 

I leaned my head back against the wall. A wave of desolation started to consume me. Thomas said that I could save Benjamin, Keith believed it, but after hearing that he kissed Shaun, I started to doubt. I felt as though my insides were being torn out. Had I really pushed him that far over the edge? Benjamin would never even consider being with anyone else since we were together and the thought just blew my mind. What the hell was he doing? What were his intentions? Why was he seducing Shaun? It didn’t fit in. Brock had once told me that the Eden drug affected each person differently, sometimes it would bring out hidden, latent emotions and feelings in people, strengthening them and giving them power. Other times it would work against them, and turn their own body and mind against them. Could it be possible that the Eden drug was clouding Benjamin’s judgement? The more I started to think about it, the more I started to feel as though Benjamin was becoming something worse than a monster, he was becoming his son, Burnley. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Shaun now, I was afraid that he would see the guilt and grief in my eyes. “What was it like, when he kissed you?”

Shaun’s fingers moved slightly on the floor, smearing his own blood. “I thought that it would be overwhelming and sensual, something to knock me off my feet and be everything that I wanted it to be.” I felt his eyes on me now. “I wanted him to seduce me and make me feel alive, because that is what Ben does. He takes the dying and breathes new life into them…but that’s not how this was. This felt… wrong. Do you know what it’s like when you’re cleaning out a fire place and you get a face full of soot and ashes? It goes right into your eyes, making them sting and water, they go up your nose, burning the inside of your nasal cavity like a flame, and cling onto your lips, tainting everything that you taste. That’s what the kiss felt like. He didn’t even seem to be really alive either. I looked into those terrible amber colored eyes and all I could see there was emptiness, no soul at all.” Shaun paused and I looked over at him, seeing tremendous pain in his face. “I never want to feel anything like that again….but I guess that I don’t have to worry about it anyway. I can feel the life draining right out of me. I won’t live much longer…I wish that I could kiss Leanne one more time. She was always so warm…”

“Stop talking like that! Keith went to get some supplies for you. This isn’t 2018 Earth, Shaun. This is Prox, it’s the future, the medicine technology is so much better. If he brings back the right stuff, we can close up the wounds on your back there and stop the bleeding. You’re not going to….” I stopped talking, I felt all the color leave my face. “You don’t want to live, do you?” I asked quietly.

Shaun drew in a deep, painful breath and then slowly exhaled. “There comes a time in your life when you just know that you have to let go and accept your fate. Ever since Benjamin died, I haven’t been feeling much like myself, I started to slip down into this depression that just wouldn’t let go of me. Every morning when I woke up, it got worse and worse. Nothing seemed to make me feel like living anymore. Not music, not Leanne, nothing. I spent days on the couch, feeling miserable for myself. I wished that I could just go away and never come back. It would be so easier to vanish and not be a problem for anyone anymore. Then somehow Keith and I ended up here, and when I saw Benjamin alive again, I thought that these feelings would go away. But they didn’t, they just got worse. He put some kind of darkness inside of me that made me feel like I was choking, suffocating in my own sadness. I don’t want to be here anymore, in a world like this.”

Listening to him speak caused chills to run down my spine. I never knew how much influence Ben really had over Shaun and Keith. I always just assumed that they were close friends and nothing more. Now I knew the truth and understood with terrible clarity, because I felt the exact same way. Without Benjamin, my life was nothing. “You can go home….” I said, trying to hold back the tears that were threatening to pour out of my eyes and make some feeble excuse for him to hold on. “Back to Leanne, she loves you.”

“I am tired of pretending, Dustin. I can’t keep this false facade of happiness up anymore. Benjamin did something to my heart and it’s suffocating me. I’d rather lie here and die rather than ever see him like that again.” 

I lowered my head. “Jesus Christ Shaun, why did Benjamin do this to you?” I asked underneath my breath.

Closing his eyes, Shaun whispered. “These wounds, they weren’t caused by Benjamin. He didn’t ever need to touch me physically to hurt me. It was Rhiannon. She has a terrible plan to bring her son back from the dead by killing that baby that Benjamin brought here. Apparently that’s where Burnley’s soul is being held. She needs to sacrifice the baby for the man to be free. I tried to stop her, but it didn’t work. She drove a knife into me, shoving it in so deep that I felt it rip my internal organs to shreds. I stood there with blood gushing out of me and pouring onto the floor and all I could think about was Benjamin, and wanting to warn him. Isn’t that sad? Even after that terrible kiss, I still wanted to warn him. I tried to run, and when I did that’s when she struck me in the back again and again and again. I felt that knife go into me every single time that she brought it down. I knew that I was going to die, and I couldn’t care less. All I could think about was Ben.”

I felt sick and nauseas. For the first time I now noticed that the blood wasn’t coming from the wounds on his back, but from underneath him as well. He was right, he was going to die before Keith came back, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. “Oh my God…Rhiannon. Brock was right, when he died, she would take physical form. He was right all along.” I put a hand over my mouth and just shook my head. This was a sick and depraved act of violence, something on Burnley’s level. My thoughts went to Lizzie. I knew that she would never let Ben take one of her children away from her. Something terrible must have happened back at the Shallow Bay. That is what she was trying to tell us in her message. Thomas knew it too, right before he died, he asked about baby Ben. He knew that Ben did something to the child. I refused to believe that he would do something so horrible. It had to be the Eden drug, there was no other explanation. That bastard Burnley had found a way to get it into Ben’s system before we left the FEC base, knowing that it would take hold at some later point and completely destroy us. I wanted to scream out in rage. Even in death that piece of shit was finding a way to tear us apart. We stopped him from destroying Prox once before and now I was finding that everything was coming full circle and we had to do it again. 

“Dustin, you have to stop her.” Shaun murmured. All the color was leaving his face now and his lips were turning an ashen blue. “If she kills that kid, Burnley will be reborn and all hell will break loose. I am too weak, I can’t do it… I can’t do anything.”

“Don’t say that Shaun, just please don’t say that.” Moving over closer to him, I saw that the blood pool which he was resting in had widened now, and it had seeped out of the bottom of the door and was slowly trickling down the hallway. I wished that Keith would hurry back. Shaun was fading fast, and he wouldn’t be here to say goodbye. I didn’t want to be here now, in this position. I was mad at myself, at Rhiannon and especially mad at Benjamin. He was supposed to make people’s lives better, not destroy them like this. Why was everything coming down to this? “Don’t worry. I will. I fucking swear to you that I will stop her. There is no way in hell that I will let that bastard come back to life.”

Shaun stretched his arm out, reaching for me. I took hold of his hand, lacing my fingers tightly with his and trying not to think about all the blood. This was the second time today that I held a dying man’s hand in mine. First Thomas and now Shaun… my heart was heavy with the grief that had to let Brock die right in front of me too. I didn’t understand why this was happening. His breathing was slowing down now. “Benjamin… he’s going to… protect her…. He doesn’t know about Burnley’s soul… Dustin… you might have to…. Kill him.”

I leaned forward slightly, looking out into the hall. Where the hell was Keith? Why was he taking so long? I regretted the decision to send him out there. I knew that I should have gone instead; I could have probably navigated the base better. Seeing no trace of him, I made a sudden decision. “Shaun, hey listen, I am going to leave you alone and go see what’s keeping Keith. I need you to hang on just a little while longer. I am going to get you help.” I moved to get up and saw a look of panic come over him.

“Don’t go.” Shaun’s voice was barely audible. “Stay…. Just a moment longer….until my heart stops beating….. And I can’t feel anymore…”

“Help is coming, Shaun. Please, just hold on… you can do it. You’re stronger than you know. Think about Leanne, think about Keith, think about going home… whatever it takes, I don’t care, just focus on something, anything and don’t let go. I need you to stay with me.”

I felt the coldness of death start to descend upon him. He took a deep breath, painfully swallowing back the frothy saliva that was building up on the corners of his mouth. “….don’t let him….take me…” He closed his eyes and I felt his hand slowly start to slip away from mine.

“NO!” I shouted. “This isn’t happening; you’re not going to die! I won’t let you!” Pulling myself up to my knees, I moved closer to Shaun’s body and grabbed his shoulder, rolling him onto his back. I tried to find a pulse in his neck, but there was nothing. “FUCK!” My eyes dropped down and immediately went to the gaping wound in his stomach. The evidence of the horrific attack on Shaun was all there, in vivid red color, neatly displayed for all to see. The blade that she had shoved into him did massive damage; not only from the initial impact, but the flesh around it was torn and serrated, as if she twisted the knife as soon as it penetrated his body just below the ribcage. I put my hand over my mouth, and tried not to vomit. There was more gore than I ever seen before. After she stabbed him, she used tremendous force to slide it down his stomach, while still lodged inside, cutting a neat slit from the ribs all the way down to his pelvis, gutting him like an animal. There was so much blood and ripped flesh covering his body that it made me sick. “No…” I said quietly. “Just no…” Pulling myself up, I put locked my hands together over the center of his chest and started doing compressions. I wanted him to breathe again; no…I needed him to breathe again. With all my strength, I pushed down, feeling his chest rise and fall as I started at count, my mind racing, trying to remember the steps of CPR. The blood that covered Shaun was now soaking into my clothing as well, and as I did the compressions, it leaked up through my fingers, making a sickening wet sloshing sound. “1…2…3…4…5… Come on Shaun, you can do this, you aren’t fucking weak, you do have something to live for!!” Tears were rolling down my cheeks as I pumped his chest. After the last compression, I tilted his head back, pinched his nose and brought my lips over to his. I was immediately repulsed and started to gag. It wasn’t the coldness that had already started to creep into those lips that disturbed me, and it wasn’t the fact that they were smeared thick with blood, but as soon as mine touched his, I could taste exactly what Shaun had been talking about. That disgusting, unmistakable taint of ash and death, the taste of Benjamin still lingered there. I choked back the bile rising from my stomach and somehow managed to force some air into his lungs. Pulling away, I ran the back of my hand along my lips, trying my best to wipe that awful taste off of them and spit out the toxic residue. I went back to the compressions again, feeling a burning sensation in my neck and shoulders as I pressed down as hard as I could onto his chest. I didn’t want Keith to come back and find a corpse instead of his friend. I had to keep him alive until help came, no more deaths, no more deaths… please! 

“Don’t do this to me! Keep fighting. Goddamn it!” I screamed down at him. I looked down at my bloody hands, positioned over the center of his chest, pressing feebly and let out a long cry of frustration. I tightened my fingers up into fists and hit him as hard as I could, pounding against his lifeless body with as much force as I could. “COME ON SHAUN! PLEASE!” As my clench fist collided with him over and over again, I could feel the burning sensation of pain creeping in to my knuckles, and it was becoming harder and harder to breathe. I don’t know how long I worked on him, putting every single ounce of energy I had into trying to keep him alive, but didn’t work. Eventually exhaustion overcame me and I had to stop. I slunk down against the wall and just started to weep. I felt defeated. My arms and shoulders were on fire and the acidic taste of ash still lingered in my mouth. I brought my knees up to my chest and rested my head on them, feeling absolutely numb inside. It felt like I was trapped inside of a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. My eyes were blinded with tears and my body was covered in the blood that wasn’t mine. Why was this happening? Maybe it would be better if Prox just ended? There wasn’t any good left in this world anyway, Burnley said that himself. From the first moment that I saw him, I knew that he would be the one that killed me. It wouldn’t be a simple physical death, he was going to beat me down emotionally and mentally, until there was nothing left, and then stand there at laughing at me as my entire world fell apart. His legacy was coming true, he was slowly destroying everything, and I was his unwilling tool. He was manipulating me, using me as his pawn every step of the way. I hated this. I hated everything. I looked over at Shaun’s gutted body with shame and guilt. It was a needless death. All he tried to do was protect that baby, a child that he didn’t even know. I wished that I was lying there in his place, resting in peace and away from this awful world. I took hold of the white sheet that I had covered him up with earlier and pulled it over his head; I couldn’t bear to see his face anymore.

I reached up and pulled Brock’s pic out of the neckline of my blood soaked shirt and held it tightly in the palm of my hand. “You were always the smartest out of all of us, you always had a plan to make things right, no matter how bad that they got.” I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. “Things are bad now, and I need you…I need you more than I ever have before. I know now that I wasted my time with you, I should never have let you walk away from me.” I lowered my head and ran my fingers through my dirty hair. “Fucking hell, just tell me what to do!” I felt something breaking inside of me and I just let it go, tears spilling over my cheeks. “WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO DO?” Letting out an intense scream of rage, I slammed my head against the wall, and felt the pain of the impact rattle my brain. It felt good. The pain was something I could concentrate on. I slammed it back again harder this time and felt the teeth in my jaw rattle. I deserved all of this suffering, this agony. A slight whimper slipped out of my throat and I opened my eyes to see my tears splash down onto the blood soaked floor. I leaned forward and with more force, I slammed the back of my head against the concrete wall again, this time hard enough that my vision was distorted, and the room was suddenly filled with stars. 

That is when I saw him. The little boy Burnley. He was sitting on the couch a few feet away from me, watching me with interest. From my position on the floor by the door, I glared at him. “I fucking hate you.” The little boy smiled at me and giggled. “I’ve always hated you, not just the man that you became, but the child that you were. It was supposed to be me and Ben together for the rest of our lives. I was in love with him! I wanted him to be with me! But no… that wasn’t possible, was it? Ben had a wife. A FUCKING WIFE AND CHILD that he loved more than me. A FAMILY! I COULD HAVE BEEN HIS FAMILY! You ruined everything and I am going to make sure that you stay dead, even if I have to give up my life. There is no way in hell I am letting you back into Ben’s life. Not now, not ever you little shit. So just fuck off and leave me alone.”

Jumping down from the sofa, he slowly made his way over to me, his little feet taking extra care not to step in the smears of blood that covered the floor. He came to a stop, standing right in front of me and for the first time I noticed that his eyes were no longer amber, but a very beautiful gray green color that reminded me very much of Ben. “Get away from me.” I snarled at him, but he refused to move. The smile faded away from his face and he reached forward, gently touching my chest. His small fingertips touched the plastic guitar pic attached to the chain around my neck and I could see a look of intense sadness slowly start to fall over him. He lightly traced over the numbers that were printed on that pic, ‘5502’, Brock’s FEC number and then looked up at me. Looking into his eyes, I didn’t see anything there now, except for a childlike innocence and wonder. All of the sins and crimes that he had committed as an adult seemed to have been washed away, every single trace of the Eden drug gone. “How… how is this possible?” I whispered to him.

Letting go of Brock’s pick, he let it drop back down to my chest and reached out for my head. Instinctively I flinched, and tried to pull away, but he smiled and said. “Look.” Reaching out for me again, he took his fingertips and touched the center of my forehead with them and everything went dark. I took a deep breath and relaxed. What was I looking for? There was a flash of light and then I was no longer at Dawn. I was back at the FEC base, in Burnley’s private quarters. The walls were lined with multiple shelves, each of which was full of shimmering vials of amber colored liquid, the Eden drug. Standing motionless, unsure of what I should do, I saw Burnley enter from the bedroom, looking haggard and pale. His hair was messy and unkempt, falling down in front of his eyes, and I couldn’t help to notice that the only thing he was wearing was a pair of tight fitting black leather pants that seemed to hug his muscular body with each step that he took. Stumbling across the room, he grabbed a handful of the vials from the shelves and made is way over to the computer chair. Throwing himself down in it, he opened a drawer and pulled out several syringes which he then filled with the various vials and switched on the monitor. Burnley wasn’t just a victim of the FEC’s experimentation, he was an Eden addict. I walked around behind him, disgusted by this memory and unwilling to stand there and watch this man shoot himself up with garbage when my eye caught sight of the computer monitor and I saw what he was watching. There in front of him, in black and white, the image filled with static was that of Brock and I, in the infirmary played out. He heard every single word that was said between us. I shook my head in disbelief. “Why are you showing me this?” I said quietly. I waited, trying not to watch Burnley pump vial after vial of the drug into himself. After each injection, he yanked the needle out of his arm, flicked the blood off and dropped it down to the floor. With each dose, he became more and more animated and alive, euphoric even. The monitor on his desk was now displaying one of the worst moments in my life, the moment when I kissed Brock and told him that I didn’t love him. “I am done. Just stop this already.” I begged. Then I saw Burnley take something out of the bottom cabinet. Curious, I moved closer to see that it was a transfusion kit. Burnley shoved the hollow needle into his arm and leaned back in his chair, letting the blood flow from his veins into a plastic bag that collected near his feet. I couldn’t help but to be mesmerized by the beautiful crimson color that flowed so smoothly down the plastic tubing. It was shimmering and shining with a slight golden color to it. This was Burnley’s blood, poisoned and tainted with an extreme concentration of Eden drug, certainly more than any human could ever possibly handle at one time. A noxious toxin that would certainly kill whomever was unlucky enough to be receiving it. Why had he done such a thing? He sat there, motionless, with his eyes transfixed on the image of Brock and I on the monitor in front of him, with a devious smile on his face. 

I felt myself moving, and then another bright flash of light again. Now I was in the observation room, looking at an unconscious Benjamin bleeding out from a stab wound and tied down to a gurney. He was unconscious and dying. Burnley walked in, cigarette in his mouth and holding that bag of blood. I wanted to scream and shout for him to get away from Ben, but I knew that this was only a memory. I couldn’t change anything that happened, I was being shown this for a reason. The room was so silent, all I could hear was the quiet dripping of Ben’s blood off the sides of the bed and down onto the floor. Burnley took a long drag off his cigarette and flicked it into the room. I watched the embers flare up and spark in the dull light as it slowly rolled away. He bent down and brought his face close to Ben’s. The resemblance between the two of them was uncanny. It was like looking into a mirror. He reached down and gently stroked Ben’s cheek, and then kissed him, letting his hand start to move down his vulnerable, naked body. Burnley’s slender fingers traveled over Ben’s chest, then down to the gaping wound in his stomach. He paused for a moment, and then pressed on the wound, making it bubble up with fresh, red blood. It was this blood that he saturated his hand with and then moved it back up. With a slow, delicate motion, he used his bloodied fingertips and traced over Ben’s lips, smearing the bright red color along them. Bending down low, Burnley pushed his hair away from his face and once again brought his lips over his fathers. I thought that he was going to kiss him again, but then I saw Burnley part his lips and slip his tongue out, and begin to lick the drying blood off. His hands clutched at Ben’s shoulders as he held his body still and proceeded to clean every single drop of blood off him that he had smeared there. Burnley’s eyes were filled with ecstasy and lust, as he savored each droplet of blood. It was a chilling vision that caused me to start to shake. I couldn’t get over the look on his face; the moment of bIiss and excitement from this his horrendous act was that thrilled him simply disgusted me. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling cold and empty inside. After the last drop of blood was gone, I waited for him to move away from Ben, but he didn’t. Burnley rested his hand alongside his father’s face, staring down intently at his closed eyes. A moment of silence passed, and then I saw Burnley look up right at me and then smile. How could he see me? His lips parted one more time and then he pressed them down onto Ben’s a final time, this time forcing them open, prying them apart with his tongue and shoving it inside of his mouth. Burnley’s amber eyes focused on me and I was immediately repulsed. He was aroused now and devouring his father like some sort of sick animal. I didn’t want to see anymore. I couldn’t take this. It was perverted and wrong. I swallowed, trying to force my own emotions back down into the dark place where they belonged. I couldn’t quite figure out how I was feeling. I knew that this entire scene was perverted and immoral, but some part of me didn’t want to look away. I wanted to stay and watch the whole thing. How far was he willing to take this deviant sexual act? What else could he possibly do to the helpless man on his table? I wanted to remember what it was like when Burnley’s lips were on mine. I wanted to smell the scent of smoke on his flesh, and feel every single touch of those fingertips. I wanted to be the one laying there on the table, naked and exposed. No, No…I didn’t want those things. It was wrong. I wanted to run away. Overcome with emotion, I turned away and felt a slight tugging on the corner of my shirt. Little Burnley. He looked up at me and pointed back towards the gurney. “I get what you’re trying to show me. You’re trying to make me feel guilt and shame all over again so that it destroys me. You want me to remember how you broke me! I won’t watch this. I can’t. People DIED today because of you! I am done with you games Burnley!” 

Without thinking, I suddenly pulled my arm back and slapped the child right across the face. The sound of my hand impacting his soft cheek was loudest sound I’ve ever heard in my entire life. The little boy’s face angled to the side, and immediately a bright red welt began to form there. The little boy frowned, and looked like he was about to cry, but kept himself incredibly composed. His hand reached up and gingerly touched his cheek. Suddenly I felt bad for hitting him, this wasn’t Burnley, it was just a little kid. What the hell was I doing? Had I just seriously hit a child? A fucking child? What was happening to me? I started to shake uncontrollably. Tugging on my shirt again, the little boy pointed back towards Ben and Burnley. Sighing, I slowly turned around I didn’t want to see any more of this. Reluctantly, I looked up and my jaw dropped, and then I knew. I wasn’t here for a confrontation with Burnley, or try and deal with guilty emotions; I was here because he was trying to show me something. With wide eyes, I watched as Burnley inserted a needle into Ben’s arm. The swirling amber infused blood quickly flowed from the bag down into Ben’s veins and color started returning to his face almost instantly. Burnley had used his own blood to save Ben’s life, which was how the Eden drug got into his system. “This is what you wanted me to see?” I asked. Adult Burnley stayed there with Benjamin at his side until the bag had been entirely emptied. Benjamin’s eyes started to open as Burnley wheeled a cart into the room with various medical instruments on it, including a suture kit. Threading up a needle, I heard Ben curse his son’s name and then the room changed back to its original form. 

“He didn’t become the Shepherd of the Damned willingly, I know that now. The Eden drug was the catalyst that pushed him over the edge, the poison that flowed through his veins and make him unable to resist.” I looked to the child in front of me in wonder. “Is there a way of undoing it? Can we save him?” I asked. 

The child took a long breath and took a step backwards, away from me. His gray green eyes now had dark circles under them and he looked dreadfully pale. I didn’t understand. Then he stretched his arms out and I could see that there were hundreds of inch long gashes running horizontally up and down his forearms, each beading up and starting to flow with blood. It dripped down over his pale flesh and onto the carpet. Where each droplet of hit the concrete floor, I could see a just a tiny pin prick of amber reflecting there. Then it dawned on me. Burnley’s blood was the reason all of this happened, and it also could be way Ben could be stopped. “If we find a way to get rid of Burnley’s blood, drain almost every drop out of Benjamin almost to the point of death, but leave enough to keep him alive and transfuse him with good blood, than he can be saved? Is that what I have to do to save him?” The little boy started to waver and his eyes grow heavy, but still he smiled and nodded at me. He was bleeding heavier now, and it dripped down soaking into his clothes. “Hey…are you okay?” I asked. The boy closed his eyes and I saw him start to fall. Immediately I sat up and caught him in midair just as his legs gave way. The moment he hit my arms, he looked up at me with tired eyes and reached up to touch Brock’s pick once more and then vanished, leaving me holding absolutely nothing. 

I pulled myself to my feet and took a deep breath. I knew what I had to do now. There was a way to save Benjamin and I was going to do it. I wouldn’t let the sacrifice of my friends be for nothing. I managed to collect my thoughts and start to think rationally again. Walking over to the door, I bent down and gently picked up Shaun’s body and brought it over to the couch, covering it up with a soft blanket that I had found in the room instead of the stained sheet. I wanted to give him at least a little bit of comfort in death. I tried to straighten out my shirt, but it was completely saturated now with so much dirt and blood that it was sticking to my body. I knew that I had to get myself sorted out before I could proceed any further. I made my way into the bathroom, and peeled off my soiled clothing, throwing it carelessly onto the floor. Leaning over the sink, I stared at my own reflection in the mirror and could hardly recognize the person looking back at me. I had been through so much in the last 24 hours that I felt it aged me 10 years. When all of this was over, I wanted to curl up next to Ben and sleep for as long as I could. 

The cold water from the tap felt good on my warm skin. I watched as all the blood slowly poured off of me and down into the drain, swirling and fading away. Once again, I thought how absurd it was that none of the blood on me was my own. Not mine. Thomas’s blood, Shaun’s blood, and even Brock’s. They gave everything that they had for me. Things were happening so fast that I didn’t have time to mourn them. I had gotten this far, unscathed and spared, and it wasn’t fair. I had this lingering feeling though that my time was going to come, and I could only hope and pray that it would be quick. Before I left the bathroom, I took another look into the mirror and my eyes went down to Brock’s pick around my neck. It was flipped over backwards. With slightly shaking fingers, I reached up and turned it over, and sighed. There, on the front of the pick was one single bloody fingerprint. A child’s fingerprint. “This doesn’t change anything. I hate you Burnley, and I fucking swear that I will NEVER let you come back.” I whispered. Grabbing a towel, I turned on the hot water, letting it run for as long as I could to come up to the hottest temperature and dipped it in. Taking hold of the plastic pic, I started scrubbing with the hot water. I wanted to get every single trace of that bastard off of me. Never would I let him touch me again. 

Moving back into the room, I picked my way through the closets of clothes that had already been ransacked, finding a pair of simple black pants and a black shirt that fit reasonably well. I quickly got dressed and laced up my boots; the fresh set of clothing made me feel a little bit better and reenergized me. I returned to the bathroom for a moment and picked up gun that Keith had left me. I switched on the power and looked at the charge. Still only enough for one powerful blast. That was all I needed. It wouldn’t take much to bring Rhiannon down, and after she was dead then I could concentrate on Ben. I was going to save him. There was no other choice. With Rhiannon out of the way, and Benjamin back to his senses, we could escape with baby Ben. The only people who knew about Burnley’s soul being trapped inside was Keith and I, now and as long as we didn’t tell anyone, everything would be alright. I finally had a plan now. All I had to do was make good on it. I headed to the door, passing the darkening pool of blood that spilled out of the room and into the hall. Outside in the corridor, I slipped the gun into the back of my pants and looked around, not a single living soul was present. It reminded me of the FEC base after Burnley had gone insane and killed all the men there. Could it be possible that Ben did the same? I refused to believe it. Stepping forward, I knew where I had to go first, the medical ward. I was no match for Ben in his current state, so I to find a way to subdue him until I could get a transfusion done. The best way to do that was to drug him. I hurried off, intent on finding the infirmary and hopefully Keith. Together we were going to be the ones to save Prox. 

“It won’t work.” Scott said, peering at Lizzie over the large array of monitors in the control room of the Shallow Bay. “We’re still broadcasting a signal, but they aren’t receiving on their end. Judging from the ping tests that I’ve run, there’s absolutely no response from their coordinates at all. It’s like they completely lost power, or vanished. It’s possible that they are in the middle of an electrical storm, I can’t say for certain. All we can do is sit and wait for them to contact us.”

Holding Tristan in her arms and rocking him back and forth, Lizzie sat in the chair in front of the control panel, staring at nothing but the static on the display in front of her. “Keep trying.” She said quietly. Scott gave her a sympathetic look and then went back to work, plugging and unplugging the same cables that he had been messing with for the last two hours. Feeling numb and cold inside, all Lizzie could think about was the look of pain and agony on the face of her husband in his last moments alive. Even when he had been under control of the FEC and forced to do horrible things, there was always a small glimmer of tenderness to his eyes that gave her hope and reaffirmed her faith in the man that she loved. When she watched his last moments on the monitor, she could no longer see that soft, gentle look on his face; it was completely gone, washed away by terrible torrents of pain. He was all that she lived for, her reason for living and now that he was taken away from her, she felt completely numb inside. She wanted to cry, but no tears could come. Why did it have to be Thomas? He fought so hard to bring peace to Prox and wanted nothing more than to start a life, with a family of his own, and was no threat to Benjamin or Rhiannon at all. She had warned him, begged him not to go out there, but still he went, because Thomas loved Brock like a brother, and he wasn’t going to let his soul suffer and be tortured day and night. That was the kind of person that Thomas was now. He left his selfish and quick to judge past behind him and became a new man with a family…but that was all gone now. He was gone. What was she going to do without him? A voice rang out inside of her head. A familiar voice. ‘I lost my husband, and my world was shattered. Then I lost my son, and my world ended.’ She looked across the room to Scott, who had a mass of multi-colored cables wrapped all around him. “What did you say?”

Scott took a step forward, nearly tripping on the tangled mess. “Oh I said that we are transmitting now, the storm seems to have calmed down a bit, but they aren’t receiving and…”

“No.” Lizzie said quietly. Tristan looked up at her with wide eyes and made a small gurgling noise. “It was something else.”

Sitting his roll of cables down, Scott came out from behind the panel to stand next to Lizzie. “I know that I should mind my own business, but I really think that you should go lay down for a little while. I mean there’s nothing you can do here, and if you keep sitting here staring at these screens for hours, you’re going to go crazy.”

Lizzie’s sleep deprived glazed over blue eyes stared at the large man next to her. “I can’t do it, Scott. Thomas is dead, and if I go out that door, the men are going to ask questions, and I don’t have any answers for them. These people need a leader, someone to tell them what to do and reassure them that everything is going to be okay. I can’t be that person, do you know why? It’s because it’s NOT going to be okay. Everything is falling apart! I loved Thomas! I loved him when he was brainwashed by the FEC and did horrible things against his own men. I stood by his side at every turn when we were fighting against Burnley and the Carnivores. He became a husband and father in the truest sense of the word, even loving a child that wasn’t his. He’s gone now and I don’t have a life without him. So please don’t tell me to go out there and face those men, because they will take one look at me and I’ll fall apart.” Lizzie’s voice started to rise and in her arms, Tristan began fussing. “Thomas went out there to save a friend and look what happened to him! Did you see the wounds in his chest? They ripped him to shreds! Who the hell would do that to such a good man? I need to know so that when I open this door again and stand in front of those men…HIS men, I can tell them exactly what happened and send them out to find the bastard that did this and bring him to me. I don’t care if I have to send every man that we have to Dawn, I am going to see to it that he’s made to answer for Thomas’s death. I’ll rip his goddamn chest open with my own hands so he knows what it feels like to die this way.” Lizzie pulled the blanket a little tighter around Tristan who was now starting to cry. “So no… I am not going to leave this room. I am going to stay right here, and you are too, until you get that signal back and tell me who murdered my husband.”

Kneeling down next to her chair, Scott pulled a corner of the blanket away that she had just tucked in and the child in Lizzie’s arms stopped crying and reached out for him, grabbing onto one of his fingers. “I am not going to start with this, ‘I get it, you lost a husband and are suffering crap’ because we both know that speech wouldn’t work on you, Lizzie. You’re a much stronger person than you know. What you are feeling right now, all that rage, anger and grief, it’s just building up inside of you. Thomas went out there knowing that it was going to be dangerous, and he left you here alone because he knew that you could keep your emotions in check and make logical decisions. What you’re doing now, this isn’t you. You are the gentle, kind hearted woman who looks after everyone in this base, not just your own family, but every single soul who walks in that door. Don’t let Thomas’s death change you.”

A single tear rolled down Lizzie’s cheek. “What am I supposed to do without him? How can I face all those people without him at my side? I don’t want to be alone again.”

Smiling, Scott glanced down to Tristan. “You’re not alone. This little boy, he’s the reason why you have to keep going on now. He’s all the proof that you need to know that there is still good in the world. This is Thomas’s gift to you. We’re going to get through this, together, and then years from now, when you go to tuck him into bed at night, you will tell him stories about how brave his father was, and what he did to try and save a friend’s soul.” Scott carefully laid his hand over one of Lizzie’s and she stopped trembling. “Lizzie, I am going to tell you a secret. The only other person I’ve told this to was Thomas, but I want to share it with you.” Reaching up, he gently wiped her tear away.

The door to the control room opened and Lizzie stepped outside. Her eyes were tinged with red, but she had long since stopped crying. Taking a breath, she looked around to the corridor in front of her where the men and women from the Shallow Bay were busy with their duties. None of them were attacking her with questions, or staring at her in sympathy. Each one was doing their job, working as a team and keeping the Shallow Bay safe. Scott stepped out from behind her. “See? I told you. They respect you.”

Turning to him, she looked down at her son for a moment. “You’re right. I am sorry that I had such a foolish moment and lost myself. I just got… overwhelmed.” Lizzie said as she watched the people walk by.

Scott shrugged. “No need to apologize. Considering that you’re going through, I think that you are doing wonderful.”

Blushing, Lizzie stepped forward and offered the baby to Scott. “I’d like to go take a walk in the greenhouse before I go back to my room to relax me. Would you mind taking Tristan for me? I just want some time to myself before I get some rest. I won’t be long.”

Carefully taking the baby from her, Scott nodded. “Of course. I’ll bring him to your room and get you some medicine to help you sleep, and then I will meet you there.” She smiled at him and turned off in the direction of the greenhouse. “Lizzie.” He called after her and she stopped to turn around. “Thank you for letting me help you with this. I’ll take care of everything, I promise. I’ll watch over you.”

Lizzie smiled at him. Even though her heart was breaking, she had found a way to let go of the anger and bring herself back to reality. It was all because of him. “Thomas trusted you, Scott. And now that I know the truth, I trust you too. I should be the one thanking you for believing in me.” Without another word, Lizzie made her way down the hall towards the greenhouse. She knew that Scott was watching her walk away. He would wait there until she was out of sight, keeping a watchful eye on her as always. As she walked, she thought about the story her told her, and the secret that he revealed to her. It was both heartbreaking and inspiring, and she knew the reason why Thomas had trusted him so much. Much like Benjamin, Thomas had a knack for finding the good in people. That’s just the kind of person that he was now, so different from when they had first met. Now that he was gone, Lizzie realized that family meant more to her than anything else. Her heart was aching for her husband, but it was her son who needed to be protected and cared for now. The voice that she had heard in her head earlier belonged to Rhiannon, and now more than ever, Lizzie was frightened for her remaining child.

The glass hallway that led to the greenhouse had been temporarily repaired with large black tarps, nailed down tightly to prevent the storm outside from causing any further damage. The broken bits of glass had been cleaned up, and the floor scrubbed, removing any evidence of the great tragedy that had taken place there. Stepping into the darkened tunnel, Lizzie shivered. Some of the corners of the tarp had pulled up slightly at the edges, letting in the cold from the storm outside, and the tile floor was lightly lined with a layer of new fallen snow. She took a deep breath and looked to the end of the hall, where the door to the greenhouse was. There was a soft, delicate glow from the artificial sun lamps that were keeping all the seedlings warm and safe in their bedding pots that called to her. She wanted to be in there, amongst the sprouts and rosebuds, soaking in that warmth and chasing her dark thoughts away. Pulling her jacket tight around her, Lizzie took a step forward and her foot crunched on something. Looking down, she saw the dead, dried vines of the white roses which lined the hall on either side that had succumbed to the cold. She reached down and picked up one of the blooms, which was paper thin and almost translucent, holding it in her hand. It broke her heart to see such a waste of life. Something so young and beautiful, cut down even before it had time to really take shape and be something wonderful, just like Thomas. Carrying the delicate rose in her hand, she started towards the greenhouse entrance when she noticed something lurking in the shadows at the end of the hall. She stopped in her tracks and looked behind her for a moment, checking to see if Scott had gone. There was no trace of him. Taking a deep breath, she called out into the darkness. “This area is off limits for the time being, it’s not safe. Whoever you are, you should not be here. Please come out so I can escort you back inside.” The loose tarp high overheard suddenly caught the wind, sounding like the flapping of wings, which made Lizzie jump. The figure did not move. She clutched the dead rose in her hand tightly, to stop herself from trembling. Carefully, she took a few more steps forward and could now see that it was a person, hunched over and cowering in the corner near the door. They appeared to be injured. “Hey, are you alright? I am not going to hurt you; I just need to know if you’re okay.” At the sound of her voice, the figure moved very slightly, and Lizzie moved in closer, her boots crunching in the snow.

Now only a few feet away, Lizzie could see that the person was clad in long black, faded robes from head to foot. Every single inch of their body was either wrapped or draped in shreds of black fabric, making them look like a beggar. Her heart went out to the poor soul hiding in the shadows. After Aaron and his men had taken down the FEC and destroyed their bases, some of the humans that they were using as slaves had fled out of fear. Scared and confused after being held captive for so long, they went into hiding which refused to become part of the Messengers. Living on the outskirts of civilization, occasionally one of them would come to the Shallow Bay for medicine, or if things were incredibly bad, to beg for food. Thomas always treated these people fairly, like they were one of his own, because every human deserved to be treated with respect and kindness. Lizzie now stood in front of the person, and cleared her throat. She was the leader now, and had to be diplomatic. Holding her hands up, she offered them a warm smile. “Look, I don’t have a weapon; I am unarmed and I am not going to hurt you. My name is Lizzie, my husband Thomas, is the Commander of….” She stopped, stumbling over the words. “Um… I am the Commander of the Shallow Bay and I want to help you. If you’re injured we can take care of you, if you’re hungry we can feed you. I know that storm outside is bad, and I can’t leave you out here all alone. Please come inside with me. I won’t ask you any questions, I promise. Just come in, get warmed up, and some food. That’s all I ask.”

The figure moved its head slightly and Lizzie extended her hand, reaching down. Several moments passed, and the person remained still. Not willing to give up, Lizzie held her ground, hand extended, waiting patiently. She was cold and tired, but was in desperate need to help. The wind howling all around her, Lizzie was slightly distracted by a very quiet tapping on the roof above her. Thinking it was just the snow turning back to rain, and it was the droplets of water hitting against the tarp, she ignored it. With her attention momentarily diverted, she didn’t see the dark figure start to rise up in front of her. The movement caught her eye, drawing her back and she smiled as it now stood in front of her. “That’s it.” Lizzie said warmly. “Everything will be okay. Come on then, let me show you the way inside.” As she turned around, suddenly the nails that were holding the tarp down popped out, and the material ripped off, flying high into the night sky like a kite. Lizzie let out a scream as her eyes fell upon hundreds of crows perched on the metal beams of the tunnel above her. They cried and flapped their wings anxiously, their black eyes staring down at her menacingly. Before she could react, the figure behind her reached out and grabbed hold of her arm, sending a shock of bright purple energy flowing from it into her, scorching her skin and causing immense pain. Screaming out, Lizzie turned to see the figure pull down the cowl that covered its face and her eyes widened. “Selene? No, you’re dead! What happened to you?” 

Extending her arm, Selene moved her fingers in an intricate pattern and summoned the scythe to her side. It formed out of nothing but air and slipped easily into her hand. Lizzie shook her head. “What’s going on here? Please let go of me, you’re hurting me!! Why are you doing this?” Wiggling and struggling with all her might, Lizzie pulled against her and without warning, Selene let her go, and she fell down to the ground with a thump. She watched in horror as the dark thing stepped forward, looming over her and then pulled something from her pocket. Scrambling to get away, Lizzie’s feet skidded in the snow as Selene raised her hand and dropped the item down in front of her. As it hit the ground, it made a very distinct pinging noise and Lizzie knew what it was. She stopped moving and leaned forward, reaching out and scrambling through the snow to pick it up. It was Thomas’s wedding ring. The dull metal seemed to shine brightly in the palm of her hand; and the specks of dried blood on it were soon washed away by the stream of tears that ran down her cheeks. The reality of what happened to her husband hit her harder than a brick. “It was you! How could you do this! He loved you Selene! You are his mother!!” Lizzie’s voice echoed loudly in the tunnel, which agitated the crows above and they started to call out, a grim mockery her cries of anguish. Sitting up, Lizzie held the ring so tight in her hand that she thought that she would bend the metal. Selene took hold of the scythe with both hands and it started to come to life with energy. “Go ahead, kill me if you want!! I don’t care. At least I will be with the man that I love!” Swinging it high overhead, a faint smile came across Selene’s lips as she prepared the scythe for its final descent. Lizzie looked up at her defiantly, her eyes flashing with rage. The blade whistled through the air, seconds away from splitting her skull in two. Lizzie closed her eyes so tightly that she could see stars. No, they weren’t stars… it was static. Electronic static, screaming in her head. It hurt so bad. 

“Lizzie!! Lizzie!!” Someone was calling her name. She waited for the buzzing noise in her ears to stop. “Lizzie. Hey, there you are! It’s cold out here. You’re freezing. We need to get you inside.” A soft, warm blanket was draped over her shoulders and she felt someone pulling her to her feet. It was Scott. 

“What just happened?” She asked with a shaky voice, slowly opening her eyes as the static faded away, bringing her back to a harsh reality.

Wrapping his arm around her, Scott started to lead her inside. “I came looking for you, Lizzie. It’s been hours since you said that you were going for a walk out here. I waited for you in your room, but you never showed up. I would have come for you sooner, but something came up.” He shook his head and pulled the door open for her. “Why were you out here? I thought you were going to the greenhouse?”

“I… I… never got there.” Ducking out from underneath his arm, Lizzie went back to the entrance of the tunnel and looked around. The tarp had blown off during the storm, but there was no one hiding at the end of the hall way, and no black crows circling overhead. The only footsteps in the snow were her own. Her head hurt and she felt incredibly dizzy. “I don’t know what happened. I saw something out there.” She closed her eyes for a moment and saw a flash of electronic static again, and then another, and another. The buzzing in her ears returned. Her knees started to give way. Scott grabbed her by the arm again and held her up. As soon as she was back on her feet, the feeling went away. She forced herself to calm down. “I am okay. I am fine. Really.” Taking a deep breath, she let him escort her back inside. As soon as she felt the warmth of the Shallow Bay on her skin, all her feelings of dread disappeared. “I don’t know what came over me. I think I just fell asleep for a little while. Nothing to be worried about Scott.” Pulling the blanket around her, she smiled at him. “I want to go back to my room now. I want to see my son.”

All the color faded away from Scott’s face. “That’s why I had to come find you. It’s Tristan. Something’s wrong with him.”

“I honestly don’t know why we ended up here.” Keith mumbled to himself as he walked down the empty corridors of Dawn searching for the medical wing. “I mean it’s not like we’re superheroes or anything like that we’re just ordinary people. I like to eat pop tarts, l love it kittens and I shop at Hot Topic. What’s the big deal? Why are we so special?” Sighing to himself, he looked down to the stains of blood on his hands, Shaun’s blood and frowned, picking up the pace a little. 

He didn’t have to go far before he ran into an area sealed off with large plastic curtains. “Bingo!” he said, and threw them open, creating a grand entrance for himself. The massive room in front of him housed several beds which lined the walls, along with a set of monitors and various other devices. “Well this looks like the place, now I guess it’s time to start ransacking.” Making his way over to the first bed, he found a crash cart and hastily pulled the top drawer out with such force that the contents spilled out all over the floor. Cursing to himself, he bent over and started going through them, much to his dismay there was nothing there that could be of any help. He pulled out the second drawer and then the third, and fourth. None of it was useful. “What kind of messed up hospital doesn’t have bandages and gauze?” He fumed. Zipping around the room, he continued to empty out every one of the crash carts and came away with nothing. Stopping for a moment to catch his breath, he leaned up against one of the beds and ran his fingers through his blond hair. “Jeez, maybe this was a mistake. I don’t know what any of this stuff is. Shaun’s going to freaking die and it’s because I can’t find a simple Band-Aid.” Kicking one of the crash carts aside, he started to search through the mess once again when his eyes were drawn to a small room to the side of the ward. Curious, he stood up and grabbed his empty bag, slinging it over his shoulder. “I bet that’s where they keep the good stuff.” He mumbled and slowly crept over to the door. As he approached it, he noticed that it was a small room with only one bed in it and a large window which was used for isolating a patient. From his vantage point, he could see that the walls were lined with shelves which contained large packages of gauze, hemostats and tape, everything that he needed. Throwing open the doors, he hurried inside and threw his bag on the bed, grabbing handful after handful of the wrapped medical supplies. There were vials of drugs here each labeled with chemical names that he didn’t recognize, but could also be potentially helpful. Standing on his tip toes, he pulled boxes of these off the shelf too, knowing that the more stuff he had, the better chance he would have at saving Shaun’s life. Looking down at his loot, Keith could see that he had over stuffed it with as much as he could; and it was bulging at the seams. With great effort, he snapped the latches shut and slung it over his shoulder. “That wasn’t too hard after all.” He said with a grin.

Satisfied with his find, he made his way to the door, deciding that since he didn’t know how long he wasted in finding the medical wing, he’d sprint back through the halls. Time was of the essence now and every moment counted. Pushing the doors open, he stood at the back of the ward, looking at the entrance that he came in from with the plastic curtains and saw that there was a man standing there. He was dressed strangely, in a tight fitting sleeveless shirt which had a hood on it, pulled up and concealing his face, a pair of black colored pants and black combat boots. There was a heavy backpack strapped on his back behind him. Judging from his lean, firm toned frame, Keith knew that this could not be Dustin, Shaun or Benjamin. “Hey man, look…I didn’t mean to steal your shit here, I have a friend who is hurt out there and he needs this stuff badly. I have to get it to him as soon as possible. So if you can kindly uh take a step to the side and get out of my way, I’d greatly appreciate it.” Keeping his distance, Keith waited, but the man refused to move. “Okay look… if it’s about how much I took, I can pay for it all, just give me your email address and I can PayPal it to you. How about that?” At the exit of the room, the mysterious figure reached around to his back and brought out a gun, which he then aimed down the length of the room at Keith.

“Whoa! Wait a minute there, let’s not do anything crazy” Keith said, as he put his arms in the air. Suddenly he regretted his decision to leave his weapon behind with Dustin. He had gone out on his search completely defenseless, a stupid mistake to make. “All I want is to get this stuff and get out of here. I am not one of the Messengers and I am not with the FEC okay? There’s a guy, a pretty decent guy actually, out there dying on the floor. He needs this stuff. So chill out and let’s sort this out like civilized adults, there is no need for anyone to get hurt here. Got it?” Stoic as ever, the figure refused to budge. Sighing to himself, took a step forward, keeping his eyes on the man. Seeing that he didn’t take action against him immediately, Keith dared to moved even closer. “I got this.” He said to himself.

Halfway across the room, there was a loud beeping sound coming from the device that the hooded man had strapped to his wrist which made Keith stop in his tracks. Feeling terrified, he watched as the hooded figure brought his arm up, and looked down to see a bright red light flashing furiously the small device. From his vantage point, Keith could easily see the readout on the small display blinking wildly in time with each beat of his heart. The letters there illuminated the word ‘DESTROY’. The hooded man slowly looked up from his wrist to the wide-eyed Keith standing in front of him. Arming his weapon, he pulled the trigger halfway back and a red guidance dot appeared on the center of Keith’s forehead. 

“Oh shit!” Keith said, as the man’s finger twitched and the gun went off, sending an explosive bolt of electricity right towards the center of his forehead. With no time to react, or even flinch, he stood helpless as the shot flew through the air and hit its mark with deadly accuracy, colliding with the center of his head. Keith’s body jerked back and he watched as his broken glasses went flying off his face and clattered to the ground. His backpack slipped off his arm and opened up, sending the lifesaving contents fluttering down onto the floor at his feet. Keith watched in dim fascination as the man lowered the weapon and remained motionless before him. “Who are you?” he said quietly as his eyes grew heavy. There was no response. Suddenly Keith felt something warm and wet on his face. Reaching up, he gently touched the gaping hole slightly between his eyes and pulled his hand away to see his fingers covered in blood. “Oh fuck.” he said just as everything went dark and his body hit the floor. 

A new message appeared on the man’s comm device. ‘Kill confirmed. Target deceased. Proceed with Project Vela. Priority: EXTREMELY URGENT’


End file.
